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Portimão 'smart water meter' test goes ahead in local homes

water2Portimão’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.

 

 

https://www.emarp.pt/images/stories/Ambiente/BoletinsMensais/EMARP_Contadores_Telemetria_2.jpg

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Comments  

-1 #2 liveaboard 2017-03-17 08:30
They already have the data; with the escalating water charges here, reading have to be collected monthly.
The only difference is the cost of collecting that data.
My water bill is about 12 per month [including drainage and other charges].
A person drives out here, gets out of the car, reads the meter, writes it down, and drives to the next property.
I know there's a popular resistance to these new telemetric ["smart"? what's smart about them?] meters, but the current system is a holdover from the 1800's.
-1 #1 mj1 2017-03-17 08:14
case in uk where someone had new electric smartmeter installed to get a bill for 19000 pounds for one day

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