Portimão’s water company is to try out some smart meters in customers' homes and has been extolling the virtue of this technology even before the pilot project goes live.
The company aims to install 124 meters that can transmit readings to a central point, thus making billing cheaper and, so the manufacturers claim, more accurate.
Readings taken automatically means fewer water company employees will be needed to knock on doors to ‘read the meter, or walk from street to street writing down numbers.
EMARP, (Empresa Municipal de Água e Resíduos de Portimão), says the 'smart' meters are faster and have advantages in fraud detection and water loss control.
There will be no upfront charge to customers transferred to one of these smart meters but concern exists that inevitably the costs will be passed on to the customer and the cost savings will be kept by the company.
There also are security and privacy issues with concern over who has access to consumption data and what third parties can do with this information.
Councils already have access to water consumption data, but few realise that councils also have been given legal access to electricity consumption data. By adding the two data sets, properties that can be seen to use no water or electricity services can be subject to a 300% increase in their IMI rates bills.
Transmitted data always is at risk of being hijacked and there are fears in the market that adding another transmitter to a household can open the door to sophisticated hackers.
One thing is for sure, when State bodies get access to citizens’ data, they invariably misuse it.
