Stop The Smart Grid, because it is a Stupid Idea, by Simon. The “Smart Grid” is all about utilities controlling your electrical usage by remote control. And to do cool things like calling home to turn down your air conditioning. However hackers will have even more ways to disrupt your life.

Since I’m an engineer I like to look at the dark side of things. What can go wrong.

“Physicists dream of Nobel prizes, engineers dream of mishaps.” Hendrik Tennekes …

Former CIA director James Woolsey calls the Smart Grid a stupid idea:

His reason? It would be a hacker’s dream. He mentions a hacker in Shanghai. I think what he really means is a Chinese Cyber Warfare agency. That would be P.L.A. Unit 61398 on the outskirts of Shanghai.

Encryption is vulnerable, and any really useful encryption requires not just a cheap microprocessor, but something more powerful and sophisticated, driving up costs from where they are now.

And why do we really need a smart grid anyway? The main reason is to integrate intermittent unreliable sources of alternative energy into the grid. That is supposed to make the politicians pushing for this more expensive form of energy look good. In other words a government sponsored boondoggle. Why not wait until storage technology is better developed? Well that would delay the transfer of funds to the cronies. A politically untenable condition – for politicians.

Yet another ramification of the carbon dioxide theory of global warming, which is wrong anyway.

My advice? Keep the stupid grid. It may cost more to run but it is safer. No cost savings from the smart grid can possibly make up for a few weeks of nationwide or even regional lost electrical power, not to mention lost infrastructure like transformers and switch gear stations.

What people fail to understand is that most breaks are inside jobs. … Even organizations dedicated to security are not immune. Just ask the people that trusted Edward Snowden.

More detail at the link.