Economic experts are calling the federal government’s push for smart metering the wrong move for consumers. Paul Murray spoke to Danny Price from Frontier Economics Australia who says the required investment for smart meters in Australia may not justify the cost.
Listen to the interview via Smart meters too costly.
CITY of Greater Dandenong is planning to refuse smart meters on council property, with one councillor questioning whether they’re “an electrical form of asbestos”.
Residents concerned about the health impacts of the digital meters have contacted several councillors asking for help to stop their installation.
In response, at the 10 December council meeting Paperbark Ward representative Peter Brown moved that the council oppose installation in its buildings and investigate their rights under the law to “opt out” of the program.
“Council is going to provide leadership in this matter,” he said.
Read more via Digital meters not so smart | Star Dandenong | Star News Group Local News, Sport, Entertainment.
HOST: They say that if you can remember being at COAG, then you weren’t really there.
Someone who definitely was though was the Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She joins us now. Julia, are smart meters really going to save us all money?
PM: We are looking to make a difference to power bills and I’m glad the first ministers – that’s what we like to call them – the Premiers and Chief Ministers agreed to my plan today. It is about using new technology to help people manage their demand.
HOST: Can you understand people’s concerns though? There’s been a report that one caught fire, reports of illness as a result, and some people are concerned that the devices will really just allow the power companies to charge us more, not less.
PM: Well the devices won’t be compulsory; we’re not going to put that on anyone. People will have choices. But there are smart meters and there are other forms of technology that are emerging to help people with their power demand.
To take an example, we talked about in COAG today; you can get a device that changes a little bit the way your air conditioner works.
It doesn’t really make any difference to the temperature of your home, it’s a half a degree difference, but it saves you a lot of power.
Video of interview is at: http://theprojecttv.com.au/video.htm?movideo_p=39696&movideo_m=252877 (Smart meter episode commences at the 4:00 minute mark)
Don’t forget to to remind Victorian power distributors that smart meters ARE NOT compulsory – and that they have NO RIGHT to intimidate and force them upon people!
Brand new SMART METER HEALTH EFFECTS SURVEY: If you feel your health has been affected by smart meters, the Maine Coalition to Stop Smart Meters request your immediate help in studying these effects. Follow the link below for more information and to participate in the 15 minute confidential survey on this subject. If you submit your survey by December 20, the Maine Coalition to Stop Smart Meters will be able to use your data in the precedent-setting Maine, USA, investigation into the safety of smart meters. Later submissions may be useful in other legal and regulatory proceedings. Responses are welcome from all over the world. This survey is sponsored by the Maine Coalition to Stop Smart Meters and www.conradbiologic.com.
Link to survey: http://www.conradbiologic.com/smartmetersurvey.html
Please help to distribute this link widely and worldwide by forwarding this message and link to any lists you are involved with, to any individuals you know that have had health effects from smart meters and by posting on your websites.
Thanks so much for your timely participation!
Ed Friedman
Maine Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
207-666-3372
[The Maine investigation is important because the burden of ensuring safety lies with the power companies.]
Federal and state leaders have agreed on a plan aimed at curbing power price rises, which Prime Minister Julia Gillard says will save households about $250 a year once it is fully implemented.
The agreement, reached during today’s Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting, does not involve the mandatory rollout of so-called smart meters.
But Ms Gillard says all states have agreed to work on options for more flexible pricing.
“We will be working with consumers to give them more options and choices about how they consumer their power,” she told reporters in Canberra.
“We will be introducing rewards into the system so that big users, big businesses can moderate power loads that they put on the system during peak times.
“We will be addressing the gold-plating of the system and overinvestment in the poles and wires.”
As part of efforts aimed at reducing the “perverse incentive” to overinvest in transmission lines, the Commonwealth has committed an extra $23 million to boost the resources of the Australian Energy Regulator (AER).
But some state leaders have already criticised the plan, with Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu expressing disappointment the changes to the AER do not go further.
“The Commonwealth declined to commit to an independent Australian Energy Regulator which means Victorians and Australians face the prospect of sub-optimal regulatory decisions,” he said.
“This will increase pressure on energy prices for Victorian families and businesses.”
West Australian Premier Colin Barnett is not convinced the plan will deliver the promised savings.
“Well there is agreement to reform it (the energy market),” he told ABC News 24.
“Whether that will provide price relief, I doubt. Maybe it will mean price increases in the future won’t be as great.”
Ms Gillard says the $250 savings estimate is based on a report by the Productivity Commission, although she concedes today’s agreement differs from that document.
The Commission’s estimate was based on a scenario where households would be required to have a smart meter.
Via: COAG signs on to PM’s Power Price Plan
Now that Premier Baillieu has signed the COAG agreement will he direct power distributors to cease bullying and threatening people to accept a smart meter?
Will Victorians now be treated with the same rights as people living in other states?
Installing smart meters to monitor electricity use would cost up to $1000 a household, the State Government has claimed as it tries to short-circuit Opposition Leader Mark McGowan’s appeal to families battling high power bills.
As a report criticised the States for the slow rollout of meters, Energy Minister Peter Collier warned yesterday that their use could lead to peak power prices soaring.
In WA, households pay a flat-rate tariff for electricity irrespective of when they use it.
Smart meters have already been installed in more than 10,000 Perth homes as part of a trial, with findings to be released next year.
Mr Collier said there were some advantages to using smart meters but based on the Victorian model – the only State where they had been rolled out en masse – it would cost about $1000 a household to buy, install and monitor each unit.
“I’m not prepared to inflict that on the WA public without justifiable evidence from the trial we’ve established,” Mr Collier said.
via Smart meters will ‘increase’ power bills – The West Australian.
The implementation of smart metering in Australia is currently the focus of considerable attention. The Federal Government’s recent Energy White Paper promotes smart metering as a way to provide information about electricity usage and curb peak-time demand to reduce bills. Frontier Economics (Australia) assesses the proposal in a client briefing and finds that the benefits of the required investment in Australia is not justified by the costs.
See: Smart metering Dumb solution – Frontier (Australia)
More than 400,000 electronic power meters have already been installed across southeast Queensland as debate rages over whether “smart meters” will help curb electricity price rises.
Ahead of a meeting with state premiers on Friday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been promoting a plan to ease increases in power prices including rolling out so-called smart meters.
The Queensland government has strongly questioned Ms Gillard’s claim that $250 a year could be saved on bills and challenged key elements including the smart meter push.
Old style power meters simply record how much power has been used and have to be checked every three months so electricity bills can be issued.
By contrast, smart meters, which have mainly been deployed in Victoria at great expense, can track when power is used at different times, allowing electricity companies to build in price incentives to use power outside of peak times.
The idea is that by spreading the power load, less money can be spent on electricity network upgrades to handle periods of extreme power use.
Energex’s Mike Swanston said more than 400,000 “second generation” power meters had already been installed in southeast Queensland properties.
He said these meters were electronic and could record information about what times of the day power was used, but unlike smart meters they did not remotely send data back to retailers so meters still had to be manually checked.
“The fundamental difference between the meters we’re using … and smart meters … is really not the meter but the real-time communications network that stands behind [smart meters],” he said.
Queensland Energy Minister Mark McArdle said he was sceptical about the benefit of a full rollout of smart meters, noting the communications systems would be a big cost.
Mr McArdle said there was “no way we can agree to the smart meter principle” because the body that was used by the Prime Minister to model electricity reforms separately warned it was hard to justify the cost of smart meters.
That was a reference to a Frontier Economics client briefing titled Smart metering? Dumb solution.
The document says it is natural to think the solution to rising electricity costs is to allow peak-time prices to rise to choke off air conditioning demand on hot days.
“This could reduce the need for new investment and save on bills in the longer term. But time-based pricing cannot happen for most small customers at the moment because most households and small businesses do not have meters that record the timing of their consumption,” it says.
“As a result, whether they consume mostly on hot days or in the middle of the night is irrelevant to the price they are charged.”
But the document argues the benefits of smart meters “often fall far short of the costs, and this is why other states have not followed Victoria’s lead” in mandating a rollout.
“But to be clear, the smart meter rollout will make Victorians worse off to the tune of $300 million in net terms – that is, even allowing for all the presumed future benefits from reducing peak demand and eliminating human meter readers,” Frontier Economics says.
“And far from keeping bills down, the rollout is adding over $100 a year on average to what customers pay on top of all the other increases.”
Mr McArdle said the total cost of a smart meter rollout in Queensland could be as high as $1.8 billion to $2 billion.
“I’m yet to be convinced that smart meters are going to be the way forward. The detail coming from the feds are being drip fed,” he said.
But Ms Gillard’s office sought to allay concerns, saying any roll-out “should be done on a voluntary market-driven (business-led) basis, not mandatory”.
“This recognises that not all customers are able to change their electricity consumption and benefit from using smart meters, and that the existing tariff rate may be more appropriate than moving to a time varying tariff,” she said through a spokesperson.
Read more via Smart power meters: a clever idea?.
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So now we have a choice, move to NSW or QLD. They seem to be more interested in looking after their people and allowing them to make their own decisions about Smart meters instead of shoving them down their throats, threatening them, and then bullying them into submission. It has been stated so often in the media recently the rest of Australia is learning from the mistakes of the Victorian Government mandate. The question is when will this Government wake up, learn from it’s own mistakes and make them optional like everyone else??
We will continue to fight until they do.
We demand the same rights as our fellow Australians just across the boarder. And that right is to say NO.
The members of the Broadmeadows Progress Association requested that the Secretary, John Rutherford, seek legal advice regarding the right of an electricity customer to refuse installation of a smart meter and the validity of the bullying tactics and threatened retribution by the power distributors.
A solicitor was approached who in turn briefed a Barrister.
Legal Advice that verifies:
A copy of the legal advice can be found at: Smart Meter Legal Advice 2012
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has elevated the humble electricity meter box on the side of the suburban house to the centre of the national political debate. She claimed on Sunday that installing so-called smart or interval meters could save households as much $250 a year on their annual power bill.
The Coalition both federally and in Queensland have responded with scepticism, arguing smart meters may actually push up prices.
“Today’s proposed $250 saving is a dishonest grab for a headline that is not backed up by any details,” said Queensland Energy Minister Mark McArdle. “It should be judged accordingly.”
In fact, the Productivity Commission report on which Ms Gillard based her claim does suggest that smart meters will save consumers $100 to $250 a year but it also says that done wrongly, smart meter technology and the related idea of time-of-use pricing could end up costing them money.
“The actual extent of the estimated benefits depends crucially on the manner in which demand management is implemented – for example, under some implementation scenarios, some initiatives are forecast to deliver net costs,” the commission said in its latest report on electricity networks.
Indeed, a cost-benefit analysis showed that smart meters matched with a system of “time-of-use” or peak tariffs for electricity could deliver anything from $7.60 of benefit for every $1 invested to a net cost of 70¢. It all depends how the scheme is implemented.
The key issues to be decided include how “smart” smart meters need to be and how the costs of power will vary between peak and off-peak times. The power companies are also arguing over who will get to install and monitor the meters. And most crucially, there is an argument over whether it should be compulsory or voluntary to have a smart meter at all.
The fundamental problem smart meters are designed to address is that demand for power spurts on a few hot days each year when households turn up air conditioners and other appliances.
To meet this peak demand, energy companies have to build expensive back-up gas generators and poles and wires that are used for less than 100 hours a year.
All consumers pay the cost of building this almost redundant infrastructure. About 25 per cent of power network spending is used only 1 per cent of the time.
Smart meters are a first step – and only a first step – to reduce this waste by providing some basic information. The “accumulation” meters on most houses today just say how much power you have used in the three months up to the meter reader’s visit and can’t tell when you used the power. But smart meters measure power use in five minute or half-hour intervals.
Once smart meters are in place, the next step is to change the pricing system so that households will pay higher prices at peak times of the day, which in turn should encourage households and businesses to reduce peak power use. To that extent, opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt is right in saying that the Prime Minister’s embrace of smart meters amounts to increasing power prices at “dinner time”.
But the Productivity Commission says the new pricing should save individual households money because they can easily switch a lot of consumption to off-peak. Pool filters could be altered to work in the morning and air-conditioners could be switched to intermittent use at peak times.
In NSW, where smart meters have been installed in about 400,000 houses and time-of-use pricing already exists, off-peak power can cost about one-eighth that of peak-time.
Longer term, if this change in behaviour slows the growth in peak demand across the whole system, it will allow power network companies to defer billions of dollars of costly infrastructure spending, delivering an even bigger saving.
Frontier Economics has estimated that savings from peak demand reduction are likely to be between $4.3 billion and $11.8 billion over the next 10 years but the benefit will vary considerably from state to state.
In South Australia and Queensland the saving per household could be $500 a year, in NSW $350 but in Victoria only $120. That is because Victoria relies on brown coal power stations that tend to run whether or not there is demand, so the gap between off-peak and peak generation costs is considerably narrower.
That is the theory but it can go badly wrong and Victoria is the prime example. The former Labor government decided that all households would be fitted with smart meters and the cost would be added to their household bills.
Unfortunately, the cost of what was then fairly new technology blew out to over $2 billion or $800 a household. The government was also concerned that some disadvantaged households that did not understand the system or could not adjust their power use might face huge bills. To avoid an outcry, until next July Victoria refused to allow time-of-use pricing, which was the whole point of the exercise.
“It appears that the Victorian decision to roll out smart meters was premature and/or poorly planned, with inadequate knowledge about smart meter technologies, their costs and associated risks,” the commission said.
A swag of reviews has been commissioned to work out how to avoid a repeat of that debacle. Giving consumers more warning and better information about how they can save money by switching to off-peak use is the key. The reviews also call for a security net for low income customers such as age pensioners.
Another question is how to cut the cost of meters. Victoria had very tight specifications for its designs, which raised costs. Some say a more basic “interval” meter will cut the unit’s cost per household to $70. Others say the meters must have displays so people can see how much power they are consuming at any time.
Power companies in Victoria have opened web portals for people to study their consumption patterns and help them prepare for time-of-use pricing. But a trial by NSW power companies Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy found that people tire of the displays and most ignore them after the first two years.
Some say the smart meter should be linked to a switch, so that it can automatically turn off some appliances. And indeed, the Productivity Commission says some consumers may dispense with the meters and just install technology that turns off power at peak times.
Queensland network company Energex offers households $250 to fit new air-conditioners with a device that switches the power to intermittent on a signal from the power supplier. For the energy industry the two crucial questions are whether the roll-out of smart meters should be compulsory and whether it will be run by the network companies or by the electricity retailers such as Origin, AGL and TruEnergy.
A series of reviews has found that one of Victoria’s big mistakes was that it rolled out the meters to all consumers, including those who have little capacity to shift from peak to off-peak power.
The commission found that this sort of compulsory roll-out would in general be much less cost effective than a selective approach, because a lot of households would barely change their behaviour.
A key state and federal adviser, the Australian Energy Markets Commission, which on Friday released a review called “Power of choice” on how to manage demand peaks, has recommended a hybrid approach where smart meters are compulsory for large power customers, which almost always have some flexibility in their time of power use, but where they are optional for smaller consumers.
The latter may choose to stay with an average same-all-day tariff. Alternatively, power retail companies may make it a selling point to offer smart meters to allow consumers to benefit from low off-peak costs. “The onus will be on the retailer… to elicit consumer consent to a smart meter through offering appropriate retail pricing offers and value added services,” the AEMC said.
Ms Gillard seems to be backing this sort of voluntary approach. “No one should be afraid that they are going to be forced with a cost that they don’t want and no one should be afraid that they will be forced to do something they don’t want to do,” she said on ABC Radio on Monday.
Read the rest of the article here http://afr.com/p/national/economy/smart_meters_spark_national_electricity_QV3RDDPWTY0QTBVSdy5YCI
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Michael O’Brian, SP Ausnet, Jemena, Citi Power, etc are you listening – “No one should be afraid that they are going to be forced with a cost that they don’t want and no one should be afraid that they will be forced to do something they don’t want to do,”.
