Stop Smart Meters Australia

TPG lands South East Water smart meter contract for Victoria

The nation’s third-largest telco has outmanoeuvred its biggest competitor to land the largest smart meter rollout in Australia, over a stretch that’s tens of thousands of kilometres long.

TPG has nabbed the 10-year Victorian deal from South East Water, part of a major smart upgrade of its water meters that will remove the need for meter readers altogether.

Both TPG and Telstra had provided connectivity for the 90,000 smart meters already operated but it was the underdog that landed the ultimate contract and will connect and manage one million meters to be rolled out over the next decade.

It’s a relatively new area for the telco but one it hopes to take ownership of, said Chris Russo, TPG’s general manager enterprise and government customer sales and solutions 

“It’s the start of a very big ambition of ours which is to take category leadership in water metering support from a connectivity perspective, and to really own that domain from a telco capability,” she said.

Ms Russo said TPG viewed the deal as exciting as it was a chance to be a part of the water industry’s digital transformation as well as test the limits of its ­network.

“The market is nascent in its level of digital adoption,” she said. “We can see it’s an industry that is rife with innovation and it’s got a lot of digital adoption to do and that’s exciting for us because we can play a part and in doing so we can really demonstrate the robust nature of our network.”

Each water meter will be ­fitted with a 4G sim and TPG will provide connectivity and the ­analytics platform that South East Water will use.

The telco will also batch test a certain number of meters for quality and assurance testing.

A digital water meter is priced between $150 and $200 depending on the type of sensors it has inside and depending on which of the three suppliers South East Water uses it comes from.

Mark Elvins, SEW’s acting general manager of digital utility, said work had already begun to replace meters across Victoria.

Each meter takes about 10 minutes to replace and can connect to the network within minutes, with its first report provided within 24 hours. From there, customers would be able to get a daily update of their water use that can be broken down into 30-minute increments.

SEW had about 42 installers who would work to replace between 800 and 900 a day, with a goal of up to 200,000 per year……..

Abridged from: The Australian

^{Letter to the Editor – Canberra CityNews:}

I’ve just made a submission on smart meters to the Australian Energy
Market Commission (AEMC). 

AEMCis currently looking at accelerating smart meter deployment in NSW, Queensland, the ACT and SA, following a request from industry players Intellihub, SA Power Networks and Alinta Energy. 

Smart meters are promoted by industry and regulators as the best thing since sliced bread. However, the replacement of electromechanical meters with digital technology has resulted in locking consumers into a continuing cycle of higher electricity bills. 

Research released by The Australia Institute in 2019 showed that “time of use pricing” facilitated by smart meters drives up household energy costs. Electricity companies and regulators push for higher electricity prices at peak times, as well as higher “shoulder” periods. In theory, this encourages people to move their energy consumption to times of the day when it is cheaper for utilities to provide it.

The Australia Institute concluded that many households have now exhausted their capacity to cut electricity consumption or change their time of electricity use. In reality, electricity companies are using electricity demand peaks to push for higher consumer prices to increase their profits.

The call to accelerate the smart meter rollout is clearly about industry interests over that of consumers. Get ready for more spin saying it’s all about the advantages for consumers. Guess who is paying?

Source: CBRCityNews

Information of the Australia Institute 2019 research can be found here

Health complaints from smart meters installed by the thousands in homes are no longer surprising.

A free resource has recently been updated and translated into English that aims to provide an overview of smart meters, with a focus on health effects. This resource is for anyone who is interested in learning more about smart meters. It is well referenced and can be used by anyone.

To download the book, go to: https://einarflydal.com/sdm_downloads/download-smartmeters-dirty-electricity-pulses-and-health-pdf/

Smart meters, Smart phones, Bluetooth, Mobile phone towers, Wi-Fi….

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Remembering Nearfield