The Federal Government wants to see 100% of homes with smart meters by 2030—starting with a compulsory roll out in 2025—that could deliver $507M in net benefits across the country.
The Australian Energy Market Commission—AEMC—is pushing a new campaign that it says offers “customers more ways to engage with the energy market now and in the future”. AEMC Chair, Anna Collyer, added, “smart meters turn power into knowledge and knowledge is power”.
It’s long overdue. Smart meters have always made sense……they cut bills, boost electricity take up, improve fault or outage response, can be monitored remotely, and ease the influx of renewables in the grid. But while they’ve been around forever it seems, take up has been glacial.
In fact the AEMC says less than 25% of customers have them in eastern Australia, which also estimates around 10% of houses would need their wiring upgraded to accommodate the new technology.
Should we blame Victoria? Their $2B smart meter rollout in 2009 saw 2.5M homes ultimately get them but the state’s auditor-general in 2015 found costs far outweighed savings. The reason seemed to be that consumers didn’t really know how to use them.
Which is probably why the AEMC is making this campaign consumer focused, calling for “simple, plain English clear communications with customers” at critical times, as well options offering cheap loans for installation costs.
Clearly electricians & cablers, the industry working directly with consumers, should also be recruited to help get the message out. We’ve had smart meters in our Smart Wiring standard for some time of course and shall be looking at how the new rules might impact those.
The good thing is the AEMC is being very transparent & is putting up a lot of helpful information. It’s in all our interests to make smart meters work the way they were intended.
Cheers, John Fennell