Want Three Hours Of Free Power? You’ll Need A Smart Meter

Many Australians will have access to plans with three hours of free power from July, but there’s a catch: you’ll need a smart meter. This means there will be a stampede of people after them in a few months time. Here’s why getting your old analog meter upgraded now is a good idea.

Are Smart Meters Worth Getting?

Got an old analog electricity meter?  These days, having any major electrical work will come with almost 100% certainty it will be replaced with a smart meter.  Major work includes getting solar and/or a battery installed.

If you don’t want a smart meter, you’re kind of out of luck, as the plan is for all homes to have them.  On the 28th of November last year, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) finalised rules requiring universal smart meter adoption by 2030.  The only state not covered is WA, but roughly 90% of homes already have one there, so expect smart meters to be universal or real close to it in four years’ time.

The accelerated rollout isn’t just because the AEMC is aiming to unlock the achievement for 100% smart meter penetration — so they say.  The official goal is to lower costs.  This is mostly achieved through smart meters allowing households to use electricity tariffs that improve grid efficiency.  An example is the Solar Sharer Offer that requires electricity retailers to offer plans with three or more hours of free daytime electricity from July in NSW, SE QLD, and SA.  If you want to take advantage of this and don’t have a smart meter yet, you may want to request one soon, because demand will be huge.

However, not everyone wants a smart meter.  To reduce resistance to the rollout, the AEMC has spent the past couple of years ensuring people will still be able to use a flat tariff after getting one.  This is a change from a few years ago, when some people were kicked off flat tariffs against their will — sometimes without notice — when their meters were changed.  It took them a while to work it out, but the AEMC eventually realised that if they let electricity retailers hit people with a stick when they did what the AMEC wants, people would be less likely to do it.

Because smart meters reduce grid costs, you might think you’d be paid to get one, or they’d at least be free.  But, strangely enough, it doesn’t work that way.  If you have work done that requires a meter changeover or request a meter change, you can be hit with charges.  They’re normally not too bad, as you don’t have to pay the full cost, but if there are complicating factors, such as asbestos in your switchboard, it can get very expensive.

This is an old analog “spinning disk” electricity meter. If you have one of these, you don’t have a smart meter.

Smart Meter Penetration

Here are the percentages of homes with smart meters already installed, from highest to lowest. It shows every state and the only two territories most people have Heard of.  The figures with decimal points are precise and provided by the AEMC on the 28th of November, while ones for WA and the NT are estimates:

• VIC  99.12%
• WA  ~90%
• TAS  78.06%
• NT  ~50%
• SA  46.49%
• QLD  42.63%
• ACT  40.27%
• NSW  39.17%

If you’re in VIC, WA, or TAS, chances are you already have a smart meter, while everywhere else the odds are around 50/50 or less.  However, if you have a solar system that isn’t elderly, you’re much more likely to have one, and if you have a home battery, you definitely should have one.

In several states, a hell of a lot of meters will have to be installed over the next four years to get to 99+% coverage.  Without the AEMC pushing the accelerated rollout, it would have taken until around 2036 for smart meters to become universal in QLD and 2037 in NSW.  In SA it wouldn’t have happened until 2041.

This big boy is an EDMI Atlas Mk10D 3-phase smart meter. If your home has 3-phase power, it will need a 3-phase smart meter and these are larger than the more common single-phase smart meters.  “Activestream” is the meter service that installed it.

How Can I Tell If I Have A Smart Meter?

If your smart meter has a spinning disk and mechanical dials, it’s not a smart meter.  If it looks like the picture immediately above or one of the pictures below, then it is a smart meter.  If it doesn’t look the same as the smart meter pictures but has a digital screen, it’s probably a smart meter, but could be an older interval meter.  These work like a smart meter as far as your bills are concerned, but can’t be read or reconfigured remotely.

A smart meter may have a short antenna on the side, but in towns and cities, it’s usually internal thanks to good mobile phone reception.

If you’re not sure what you have, the easiest way to check is to run an internet search on your meter’s model number and see what comes up.

You can also just look at your bill.  If you have a time-of-use or a demand tariff, you almost certainly have a smart meter — or at least an interval meter.  If it says “remotely read” or “type 4 metering” it’s a smart meter.  And if it says “smart meter” that’s a dead giveaway.

If you’re still unsure, as a last resort, you can ring up your electricity retailer and ask them.

This is a Landis+Gyr E355 single-phase smart meter.  It’s smaller than a 3-phase meter, but, despite this, I still don’t recommend trying to swallow it.

Why Smart Meters?

Smart meters do two things dumb ones don’t:

1. Record when grid electricity is used and not just how much.  They also do this for solar or battery electricity exported to the grid.
2. Transmit and receive information through the mobile phone network, allowing for remote reads, connections, disconnections, and reconfigurations.

This gives them several advantages:

1. No one has to be paid to be physically present to read the meter or do connections and disconnections.
2. It allows electricity plans with time-of-use or demand tariffs that encourage electricity consumption when it’s cheap for the grid to provide power and discourage consumption when it’s expensive.
3. Battery households can join Virtual Power Plants (VPPs).
4. Households can use smart meters to get information on their electricity consumption patterns.

AEMC says the accelerated smart meter rollout will save around $507 million.  They don’t give a figure per smart meter, but very roughly, they may lower overall annual costs by around $60 per household — before any benefits from joining VPPs are considered.  With around 11 million grid-connected households in the country, that’s $660 million in savings per year.  Enough to double Medicare-provided MRIs or provide every child in the world under five with a cigarette.

While these savings seem big, a considerable portion results from past rule changes that increased the cost of reading meters and operating the grid.  So while smart meters do reduce costs overall, the large headline savings would be less if we were starting from the position of a competently run grid.

Smart Meter NEM12 Files

Households can use smart meters to get information on their electricity consumption patterns by having their electricity retailer send them an NEM12 file containing half-hour electricity consumption/export details.  Details on how to do this are here.  If you’ve had a smart meter for at least a year, you can use your NEM12 file with our Battery Calculator Tool to work out how much a home battery could have saved you.

This is another Landis+Gyr single-phase smart meter, but an older E350 model installed by a different metering service.  Also, the tilt indicates that the photographer may have been slightly drunk.

Smart Meters & Tariffs

In the past, the only electricity tariff available to households was a flat tariff, which charges the same amount per kilowatt-hour (kWh) no matter when it’s used.  Nothing else was possible because old electricity meters only knew how to count and couldn’t tell time.  But smart meters allow time-of-use and demand tariffs.  Each tariff has characteristics which can make it more suitable for certain circumstances — except demand tariffs, which are usually pretty crap overall.

Flat tariffs:  These can suit solar only homes because they usually draw most of their grid electricity in late afternoon and evening when prices on other tariffs are high.  But if evening consumption is low, they could still be better off on a time-use-tariff, particularly if their solar system is small.

Time-of-Use tariffs:  These have higher rates during periods when electricity is usually expensive for the grid to supply, such as the evening, and lower rates when it’s usually cheap to supply, such as the middle of the day.  They’re normally best for battery households, as they can get through the expensive peak periods using battery power.  Plans with periods of free electricity are time-of-use.  This includes Solar Sharer Offer plans with three or more hours of free daytime electricity, which will be available in NSW, SA, and SE QLD from July.

Demand tariffs:  Instead of charging more per kilowatt-hour used during peak periods, these tariffs have a demand charge based on the highest average power draw over half an hour during a peak period.  The highest charge in a month is then typically applied to every day of the month, which can make it pretty hefty.  Demand tariffs may suit some battery households, but because one mistake or one visiting auntie who cranks up power consumption at the wrong time can be very expensive, I only recommend them for those who are confident they’ll come out ahead compared to a time-of-use tariff.

We’re now back to the EDMI smart meters. This is an Atlas Mk7A single-phase. Judging by the tilt, either the photographer was a bit drunk or the installer was very drunk.

Smart Meter NEM12 Files

Households can use smart meters to get information on their electricity consumption patterns by requesting their electricity retailer send them a NEM12 file containing half-hour electricity consumption/export details.  Details on how to do this can be found here.

If you’ve had a smart meter for at least a year, you can use your NEM12 file with our Battery Calculator Tool to work out how much a home battery could have saved you.

How To Get A Smart Meter

There are three ways to get your old analog meter replaced with a smart one:

1. Your electricity retailer decides they want to replace it and sends a letter saying so.
2. Have major electrical work done, such as getting solar and/or a battery installed.
3. Contact your electricity retailer and request a changeover.

The good news is the first one is free, but the bad news is it could still be years before they get around to you, as 2030 is still a long way off.

With the other two options you could be hit with fees.  Usually, they’re not too bad and come to under $150 for most Australians.  But make sure you’re clear on the amount to avoid an unpleasant surprise.  While having to pay anything at all isn’t great, if it lets you use three hours of free electricity to charge a battery, an EV, or even just run an electric hot water system, it could be well worth it.

It is also worth remembering that the introduction of free daytime electricity will be capped, as we recently covered.

There’s a bit of misinformation floating around about supposed smart meter harms – subscribe to our free newsletter to make sure you get my follow-up piece next week on why the people making these claims are nuttier than a lumpy chocolate bar.