Yeah, from what I can tell the meters are not (currently) connecting to your own personal network - and you'd have to allow it, anyway, else it wouldn't be able to gather device info. The networking they talk about is for the capability of the meter to report back to the power company the usage for any given point in time. I suppose if you have some device(s) openly broadcasting a unique identifier then the meters could - if designed to do so - track those few devices. But what the guy talks about in the video? It COULD happen, but it's not, and certainly not at the level he describes.

Maybe someday, but not today.

Sorry then for the misunderstanding ;)

You could still deduct quite a bit of info out of consumption though. Plus, just went through my head, nice tool for buglers. If they could hack into it, they can see (daily basis even) if somebody is not home. And with the amount of customer databases being hacked....oh mama mia! ;)

Yeah, there is a lot that can be gleaned from simply the variation of that one number, though on a wide scale it should already be really obvious info anyway: power use at homes will go up starting about 3pm and lasting until 10pm or so, while industrial and office use will decline starting about 3pm and ramping up again around 6am. If your consumption went up by several thousand watts at around 5pm, odds are you turned on your stove to cook diner. I figured that out without a meter! lol

There IS reason to be concerned, as with any data-gathering these days. But it just isn't drilling down into the nitty-gritty like he says it does. Maybe someday, but not today. And not yet involuntarily - one can install exactly this type of monitoring in their own homes, but it requires specific hardware and software, to the point of monitoring each individual outlet and knowing what is plugged in to each one of them. Something like "Outlet 8A has a lamp with a 45W bulb", "Outlet 12C has a PC with a sleep mode."

I wouldn't be so sure... Yes i agree that figuring out which outlets are being used to what degree would take a lot more work or specialization, but i only have to look to my dining room to see a fan & lights configuration where 4 lights come on at once. That could be a 45*4=180 watt spike, that's unique to only a few specific scenarios. As mentioned with the stove using 6000 watts, they can only be in one place a at a time, and if you're turning on lights in a particular order (front room to the back room) and each light has a slightly different signature, you could effectively map which outlets are being used and which aren't, given some time and data (mostly data)

As for computerizing houses and having a listing of which ports are being used to such precise degrees... I don't know, cars already have small computers in them to monitor them, i wouldn't be surprised that smart houses would be made in the not too distant future... And with smart meters, smart house technology may be required by law, much like the required health insurance that's sweeping the US right now...

I've seen a few blogs of individual homeowners who have done things like this. Those I saw were interested in energy efficiency and self-generation (solar, etc.), and were also geek-types, engineers who were using off-the-shelf hardware and custom interfaces to monitor either individual outlets or complete circuits at the breaker box. It was sort of like installing a Kill-A-Watt at every outlet, and then getting expanded historical information from the real-time monitoring. At least one of them had gathered enough historical information to assess his family's patterns of activity, and was then able to adjust the timing of things, like doing laundry, in order to get the best use of the renewable energy they created at their home.

I don't think the power companies are moving in this direction for any nefarious purposes, though unintended consequences could result.