Smart Meters: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Electricity - Smart Grid (R) Evolution: Electric Power Struggles - page 111

many commercial and industrial facilities manage their electricity use much more carefully
than residential customers, because electricity costs can be a substantial portion of their
operating expenses. Metering mechanisms for measuring and monitoring electricity use
among commercial and industrial customers, therefore, may not be as novel as metering in
the residential sector and may provide more direct benefits.
5.4 Risks and Concerns: Opposition and Resistance
In addition to the pressures and incentives affecting electric utilities' decisions to invest
in smart meters, understanding the heterogeneity of smart meter installations requires
considering public concerns associated with meter deployment. We mentioned several of
these concerns in Chapter 2 where we reviewed both the overarching promises and the
pitfalls of smart grid systems. Given that smart meters are the most prominent, publicly
recognizable part of the electricity system, many of the perceived pitfalls of smart grid are
also viewed as pitfalls of smart meters.
Before exploring the struggles and tensions of smart meter deployment in a few specific
places, this section reviews the dominant health, privacy, safety, and cost concerns that
smart meter opponents have raised when confronted with utility efforts to deploy smart
meters. Recent research characterizing public opposition to smart meters points out that
from a policy perspective there are at least two ways to respond to the resistance: (1)
opposition can be viewed as a communication failure between the utilities and residents; or
(2) opposition can be viewed as an opportunity for innovation in the overall system design
(Hess 2013 ). Either way, opposition is often linked to public concern about larger societal
issues.
It is important to contextualize opposition to smart meters: most new technologies
encounterskepticism andsomelevelofresistance uponinitial deployment. Riskperception
research highlights that we often do not perceive risks in a rational way (Slovic 2006 ) .
Instead, risk perceptions are shaped and often amplified by social factors that influence
our cognitive processing (Pidgeon, Kasperson, and Slovic 2003 ). With new technologies,
research has shown that individuals who have been involved or informed in decisions
related to implementing a novel technology are more likely to minimize potential risks
and view the technology favorably, while those who are not involved or informed are
more likely to maximize potential risks and view the same technology unfavorably. These
differences can be further exacerbated when individuals feel they have little power or
influence over the direction of technological change. Instead, people may feel like a new
technology - such as a smart meter installed by their utility - is being imposed on them,