I'm thinking not really that big a deal.. Maybe I'm just jaded.
address-> house size mapping has been done. (I think towns keep that data for tax purposes)
name -> address is a phone book away. (If you've ever bought a property you probably got some welcome mail from companies looking to sell you things)
the address->email address/online presence might be where the new data comes out.
I worked at a company that monitored peoples and businesses power use, on a circuit by circuit basis. This can be really invasive. When my boss went on vacation, his data clearly showed that (we used his house for testing). Our CEO asked his wife why she came home early, she asked how he knew (the garage door and kitchen power... He could keep his toys but not talk about it again.). Another person was wondering if he should talk to his dog walker because he noticed that one walk was really shorter than it should be...
Our sales guys would look at a company they had meeting with roof, to figure out the size and number of AC units, before going to talk to a business.
What were the main uses of this data? There's actually a lot of interesting uses here. Personally, I've been wanting some easy way to label certain circuits and outlets in my home via an app, and then get a real-time read on how much it is costing me to use them based on my area's energy rates.
I've long thought that simply making myself more aware of the actual dollar costs of usage for various things (leaving lights and computers on, etc.) could be a great way to nudge me towards better energy consumption habits (ditto for water usage).
Sorry for the late reply. The use of the energy data were to help figure were the power in your power bill was going. For example my Boss's old refrigerator was drawing a lot more power then expected. And giving hints on how to save.
We uploaded data from the box to the cloud once per minute, so you could see your usage.
We could give an estimate on daily/monthly/yearly cost. Electric rates can be weird, so businesses we had logic that would try to calculate and alert you when you were reaching a specific dollar figure (or peak period.. some utilities surcharge based on peak usage)
In general we had dashboards and alerts. Restaurants could see if the lights were on after a certain hour (usually closing). A big early win was a place that had electric heaters in the front windows that were on 24/7. It was fun watching the solar panels generate, and see when the clouds go by.
The company moved into hvac control with temperature sensors and monitoring refrigerators and cooking temperatures. Now I think they're selling services to oven companies and such.
Its AC so there is some work to pull the data out (we had a custom board to deal with the 14 channels).
Current transformers are what makes it work. There are some open source solutions are starting to show up that don't require uploading to the cloud. There are "Kill a watt" for single plug monitoring, but they lack logging.
I found a company that took those public property records and made them searchable online on 1 website. There's a huge difference between finding a phone book in the right area and manually searching by name (you need to have a rough idea of where I live), vs going to the correct county website and searching my name (you still need a rough idea of where I live, but it will be easier since you don't need physical access), vs being able to go to a single website and find out where anyone in the US lives (all I need to know is you're in the US).
Another way to look at it is that the gov could always monitor you via wiretapping, but doing it through centralized data services is easier and cheaper.
One use for this data would be for the IRS, to help determine square footage to see if it's inline with what's reported for home offices
Yes the gov also has this data which is probably one way Zillow gets it. What they don't have is the actual size of your house's various rooms which as I've already mentioned is useful for some agencies
address-> house size mapping has been done. (I think towns keep that data for tax purposes)
name -> address is a phone book away. (If you've ever bought a property you probably got some welcome mail from companies looking to sell you things)
the address->email address/online presence might be where the new data comes out.
I worked at a company that monitored peoples and businesses power use, on a circuit by circuit basis. This can be really invasive. When my boss went on vacation, his data clearly showed that (we used his house for testing). Our CEO asked his wife why she came home early, she asked how he knew (the garage door and kitchen power... He could keep his toys but not talk about it again.). Another person was wondering if he should talk to his dog walker because he noticed that one walk was really shorter than it should be...
Our sales guys would look at a company they had meeting with roof, to figure out the size and number of AC units, before going to talk to a business.
We really have little privacy anymore.