Victoria has announced it will start rolling out smart metering technology via energy distributors by the end of this year.
Energy and Resources Minister Peter Batchelor today announced Victoria's plan to equip 2.5 million Victorian households and small business with digital "smart" electricity meters, with the first deployments due by the end of the year.
Southeast Melbourne, Mornington Peninsula, and the northern and inner western suburbs of Melbourne will be the first to get the new meters, via energy distributors United Energy Distribution and Jemena.
"Jemena and UED have finalised agreements with a range of suppliers to source and install the new meters with the first expected to be installed in households later this year," said Batchelor in a statement.
"The two distributors will begin notifying the first households and small businesses of arrangements to replace old meters during the next few months."
Key benefits the minister hopes to achieve from the new technology include remote meter reading, maintenance requests, and switching. Households and businesses will also get greater visibility of actual energy consumption via 30-minute updates.
Greater transparency of consumption habits could allow households and retailers to adjust behaviour to suit off-peak pricing options, said Batchelor. "This could mean cheaper electricity could be offered at set times during the day, so a household could save money by ensuring more of their heavy electricity use is during these times."
Distributors have until 2012 to supply customers with the technology.
NSW's deadline for the roll-out of smart metering technology is 2017. Country Energy (CE) and IBM announced joint plans to trial the technology amongst 10,000 households in the coming months. At a recent media briefing CE spokesperson Ben Hamilton said the technology was evolving too rapidly for large investments in it today.
But whether Victorian households change behaviour following the deployment of smart metering will depend on another factor: price sensitivity to energy. A CE household trial in NSW revealed it was children and not parents who responded to automated alerts, for example, that lights had been left on. This would suggest that parents were not sensitive to the price of energy, Simes told ZDNet.com.au.
I've had a smart meter for a year and I am in NSW. With that said, I've never been offered the choice of a time-of-use tariff to allow me to benefit from the meter's functionality.
I will also mention that the rollout has been so disorganised that there was no chance of any benefit to either myself or my reseller. When Energy Australia got around to the meter changeover, which happened about nine months after they sent letters out explaining what would happen, they did so before the NSW Government required resellers, including AGL, to upgrade their billing systems to suit. This meant that I did not receive a bill from AGL for nine months and then was hit with bills totalling $1,800.00 when they finally got their act together. Following three phone calls to AGL, including one very heated one with one of their so-called customer service representatives who behaved like a smartarse for the whole call, I left AGL and connected with supplier. Whilst AGL's service stank and they lost a customer as a result, some of the blame has to go to the NSW Government - as they are who are responsible for the rollout of smart meters in this state.
So I have something to say to Victorians who will be getting the new meters - make sure your supplier is up to the task of not only the rollout but also the necessary changes to their billing systems so that you aren't slapped in the face with massive bills afterwards. In NSW suppliers only have to bill customers once per annum, so I am told, so AGL didn't do anything wrong - but that is beside the point. Their claims of great service and "Energy in Action", which I had to repeatedly listen to whilst I was waiting my turn on the phone fly in the face of reality.
"A CE household trial in NSW revealed it was children and not parents who responded to automated alerts, for example, that lights had been left on. This would suggest that parents were not sensitive to the price of energy"
It is actually today's generation of kids that get up in the morning, turn the lights, radio, telly and computer on and leave them running all day. It was different in my time, we turned on an appliance for a specific reason and then turned it off again before doing anything else. That said, I blame the parents - if they don't teach their kids how to be wise with energy use then they can hardly expect them to do the right thing.