Taking the "Long View" on the Fourth Amendment: Stored Records and the Sanctity of the Home

In the wake of the California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the California Energy Commission (CEC) and California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) are aggressively pursuing “demand response” (DR) energy programs aimed at reducing peak energy demand. Demand response systems convey information about market conditions through pricing or reliability signals to customers, who in turn, hopefully, alter their electricity consumption choices. In particular DR programs are aimed at shifting the time at which customers use energy through the implementation of time-varying tariffs. Armed with information about the time-varying cost of electricity residential and commercial customers are expected to reduce energy usage and/or shift their usage to non-peak, less costly, hours. Such shifts, even absent reductions in overall consumption, will reduce the likelihood of energy brown and black outs and provide direct savings to consumers. Technologies to enable the demand response system, including advanced metering research and development [OpenAMI] and sensor and control technologies development [DRETD], are under development. These technologies will be coupled with a communication and network infrastructure that supports the multicast of real-time pricing information, and the aggregation of energy usage and billing information.