Posted on 04/26/2012 10:36:42 AM PDT by Kartographer
As smart grid metering systems expand across the developed world, many are starting to ask whether the threats posed by the new devices, which officials promise will save energy and reduce end user utility costs, outweigh their benefits. In addition to documented health concerns resulting from radiation emissions and no cost savings being apparent, opponents of the technology argue that smart meters are violative of basic privacy rights and give the government yet another digital node of unfettered access to monitor and control personal electricity consumption.
Now, an alarming new documentary suggests that security problems with the inter-connected and seemingly convenient smart grid may be so serious that they could lead to a catastrophic failure of our nations entire power infrastructure.
In an interview for the upcoming documentary titled Take Back Your Power, Cyber defense expert David Chalk warns that our nation is in crisis. Not only are our smart power grids susceptible to hacking, but they may very well already be infected with Trojan viruses and back doors that will ultimately lead to disastrous consequences:
(Excerpt) Read more at nebraskaenergyobserver.wordpress.com ...
believe
power-line
low-frequency
EMF
can kill you? :-)
You would be wrong. I am just telling you what happened to me. The power cut off an I had to around 1000 dollars to get it fixed. Who says I am bashing?
The question that should occur then is "what is the new infrastructure being designed for"? And people should definitely have a say in that direction.
There isn't any obvious benefit to customers in the "Smart Meter" infrastructure. Utility companies are finding that these meters are very expensive to deploy. In fact the major electrical utilities in this region are asking for rate increases to cover the additional costs.
Who benefits from this?
My observation is that these programs are being heavily pushed by government regulators at the state and federal levels. These are the same people forcing utility companies to take older power generation plans offline faster than new ones can be built.
What could possibly go wrong?
Why worry about three years from now? There is only 238 days remaining on planet Earth!
So a tree limb falls on a line in Ohio and knocks out power to the whole northeast and part of Canada, but a hacker gaining access to the grid couldn’t cause much of a problem?
In a word, no.
We’ll see you in three years. I put a note in my Outlook calendar. Which I’m confident will work then, because we *will* have electricity. :-)
If they can hack in to steal money, what makes you so sure they can’t hack in to cause mischief?
Heck the don’t even have to hack in its’ been proven already if you have the right tree fall on the right lines in Ohio you make it go dark quick. ;-)
The grid should be a single entity, but cooperatively owned by the electricity producers, who would pay in for their use, and pay out for delivery to their locally owned grids, but get a dividend (figured out after operating and construction costs) based on their number of co-op shares. This needs to be settled, and would spread risk and costs around, and ease the transition to things like superconducting (by definition buried) trunk lines. Thanks Kartographer.
>> “People don’t pay for the metering infrastructure directly. So, they shouldn’t have a say in how it’s designed.” <<
.
Here’s the deep flaw in your reasoning:
The “smart meter” is an unauthorized real time surveillance device, sending a constant stream of site specific data.
If the meter were only capable of sending a monthly summation of my total electric usage, I would have no complaint.
.
100% Certainty of Total Catastrophic Failure of Entire Power Infrastructure Within 3 Years1) Ill-informed balderdash; there are 3 independent, NON-interconnected 'grids' in North America to start with.
2) Over-looks man-in-loop operation (it's what keeps the system running day-to-day hour-by-hour!); islanding, selection of alternate transmission paths during thunderstorms and damage to transmission systems ... there are multiple redundancies if, and only if each system operator is capable of seeing operation in his area (unlike Ohio's First Energy where bad things that they didn't see started about an hour before on a 'non-standard' temperature day.)
considering the record of mischief I see it to be reasonable that at some point a hacker could and most likely will cause a major outage. How bad it will be????
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