By: the_green_millennium
8/11/2009
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Meters set to drive up power bills
SOME households face an annual increase of $320 in electricity bills with the installation of smart meters and implementation of the Federal Government's climate change laws.
A study by the St Vincent De Paul Society, due for release this week, found that low-income earners could pay as much as 40 per cent of their fortnightly income on electricity.
The report says smart meters will increase the average domestic electricity bill by an average of $80 a year by changing billing from a flat rate to one based on the time of use, if the NSW Government makes their installation mandatory.
It says the biggest impact will be on low-income households including pensioners, young families, people with disabilities and the unemployed because they are at home during energy-use peak periods.
Winners with smart meters will include households with above-average electricity consumption, all-electric households that do not use gas and double-income households with no children where no one is at home during the day.
The study warns that the Federal Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will add an additional $240 to the potential $80 hike.
It says the CPRS will be particularly severe in NSW because of its reliance on coal and relatively fewer households having natural gas.
"It is reasonable to suggest that if the Government decides to roll out smart meters in NSW, annual electricity bills for households may rise in the order of $320 per annum,'' the report says.
Gavin Dufty, the manager of policy and research at St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria, said: "Our analysis found that a stay-at-home single parent with two young children may see their annual electricity bill increase from $145 to $175, if reallocated from a flat tariff to a time-of-use tariff.''
Smart meters are being installed in every home and business in Victoria. They are not mandatory in NSW. Smart meters are installed in new homes and when meters ... |
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By: the_green_millennium
8/11/2009
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meters are replaced. Up to 600,000 smart meters have been installed, and distributors estimate they will install 20,000 each year. A directive from the Ministerial Council on Energy in June 2008 committed Victoria and NSW to have about 5 million smart meters installed by 2017.
A spokesman for Energy Australia disputed claims that time-of-use tariffs would force up costs. He said 74 per cent of the 180,000 NSW customers on time-of-use tariffs were paying less than what they paid when they were on the fixed rate. Of the rest, 60 per cent were paying $20 a year more.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/meters-set-to-drive -up-power-bills-20091107-i2t0.html |
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By: pol_pak
8/11/2009
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IF they really wanted to reduce consumption during peak cycles they should allow, encourage and support introduction of power storage units to each building.
Power storage devices behave like battery banks.
Power storage devices automatically recharge in the off peak cycle, then source power for devices regardless of cycle.
Also guarantees power supply for lights and radios during power failures...
. |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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Funny how things have got so much cheaper now that the government has sold off the peoples utilities that they an their forefathers have paid for through their Tax with no referendum asking is this what the people wanted.
The TRUE reason why we are running short of power an water is because of over migration that is the true reason, because both major parties fail to plan for the future.
So next time you vote try thinking out side the box if you donât like it, then become interested in what other independents candidates have to offer as right now we have Taxation Without Representation which is said to be Tyranny
Definitions of tyranny on the Web:
· dictatorship: a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.)
· absolutism: dominance through threat of punishment and violence
In modern usage, a tyrant carries modern connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who places his or her own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population which the tyrant governs or controls. ..
Punishing the poor is Tyranny
But only have the power to change it if you donât like it at the next time you vote |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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All so the smart meter Adds more people to the unemployment line, as you donât need people to read your meter
Once seen a movie, an now living to see it come true, it started with a old man in a apartment, with only one light bulb burning, that was his only source of light in the who apartment, a knock at the door he opens the door an his son is standing their holding a ham, they sat down to eat the ham, his father ask how did his son came by the ham, his son was a detective an went to investigate a murder at a elite restaurant, as he walked through the kitchen, he told the cook he need it for evidence, his father replied he remembers as a small child that ham an meat, electricity, water was a normal way of life now it was only for the elite |
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By: aussiearisen
8/11/2009
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| My gas powered ipods are selling like hot cakes. |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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A smart guide to smart metering
Automated Meter Reading (AMR) is a forerunner of smart metering. The essential purpose of AMR was to replace the conventional billing process: using information and communications technology instead of manual meter reading. It ensures that accurate readings are sent regularly to an energy company so that customer billing can be accurate and timely. But it wasnât long before people realized that there is much more that could be done with the infrastructure required to automate meter readings.
So smart metering can be broken down as follows:
1. A more intelligent meter - smart meter - than the ones in our homes currently. âSmartâ refers primarily to its ability to communicate, though âsmartâ may also include increased accuracy and other functionality. In fact it turns out that there is an extremely long list of things that âsmartâ meters could do. Weâve included some of these things at the end. But itâs worth noting that there is no consistent definition of what constitutes âsmartâ.
2. An advanced metering infrastructure â AMI - which enables information to be exchanged between the meter and the energy supplier
3. Meter data management â MDM - software that stores and processes data
4. Sometimes an energy display is included in the scope of smart metering
In short, most smart meters communicate their information over a Local Area Network to aggregators, which bundle this up into a larger package of information. The aggregators then relay the bundled information to servers over a Wide Area Network. The information then gets stored and processed by the servers. |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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Different options are available for the communications infrastructure. These include plc (power line carrier â the existing electricity wires to you and me), gsm/gprs (the mobile phone network), mesh radio (radio devices talking to one another wirelessly), pstn (the telephone network), and ip (the internet).
Issues with smart metering
1. Because its origins lie in AMR, the approach that is often taken is i) replacing a manual data collection process with IT and ii) seeing what else can be done with that IT and the information that is collected. The approach that should be taken is i) understanding customer needs and business needs and ii) developing cost effective solutions to those needs. The energy industryâs priorities are generally, and in order, generation; distribution and; billing. This is a long way removed from many industries that put the customer first. The energy display is a good example of this â it is generally little more than a meter out of the cupboard when it could be a key customer touchpoint.
2. Smart metering is an expensive thing to implement because it consists of a lot of new hardware that needs to be fitted by trained personnel, in a lot of homes, with expensive software that needs to integrate with legacy systems. Given the cost, you wouldnât want to be going back any time soon to improve it. But there are dangers that the AMI component â the communications piece â and the smart meter itself get specified in a way that is limiting to future development. Smart metering has an Achilles heel that could turn out to be smart meteringâs Y2k. There are three components:
a. Data granularity and quality. Because smart metering is a replacement billing process (see 1. above) readings are typically every ½ hour because this is the level of granularity that people think is needed for time of use tariffs. However, powerful information that helps the customer could be obtained through increased granularity â possible as fine as ... |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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b. Bandwidth. Because of a. bandwidth is assumed to be very small. But this fails to account for the possibility of finer granularity of data or future uses to which the communications infrastructure might be put. Home healthcare, for example, has very similar requirements.
c. Communications technology. The technologies that are currently being deployed will be very different from those that will be available in 10 years time, but the meters that are going out now have no way of being able to upgrade the communications hardware.
3. Because energy supply is a regulated monopoly in many (particularly North American) territories, solutions must be universal. There are also often constraints on these companies that prevent them from creating new revenue streams. The upshot of this is gold-plated solutions that canât be leveraged for other purposes whose entire cost is passed on to the customer.
4. Governments and regulators find it hard to resist the call for something âsmarterâ, and âsmart meteringâ as a term is carelessly used as a solution to all ills. Governments and regulators need to be clear about their objectives (which might include reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, fairness for customers) and not rubber stamp solutions that have the flaws identified above just because they are presented as âsmartâ.
Other relevant terms
Demand-Side Management (DSM) is an aggregate term to describe everything that happens on the customerâs side of the meter. It includes Demand Response â when an energy company turns down or switches off the customerâs appliances to reduce demand so that the generation/distribution infrastructure can cope with a peak in demand. DSM also includes energy displays, websites, appliance monitoring and control.
Energy displays present information to the consumer on their energy use. At the core of most is a reading of real-time usage. |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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This information can be obtained before smart metering is rolled out by means of a sensor, which is clipped onto the cable between the meter and the consumer unit. Post smart meter roll-out this information can come directly from the meter. Energy displays are also called RTD (real-time display/device), IHD (in-home display/device), energy monitor, energy meter, electricity display device, and also, inappropriately and confusingly, âsmart meterâ. Onzo likes âenergy displayâ because itâs simple and clear and has no overtone (unlike monitor which sounds a bit big brother) and isnât going to turn into a meaningless acronym.
Smart grid is the term widely used to describe more effective distribution of electricity â as todayâs alternating current power grid was created in 1896 itâs not surprising that there are some efficiencies which can be obtained by effective monitoring and management. Distribution is what happens to electricity between the power station and the meter. There are two ways in which the smart grid can extend beyond the meter. The first is when customers generate their own electricity and feed this into the grid. This is called microgeneration and includes combined heat and power plants, wind turbines, solar panels (solar pv), and (less likely) hydro-electric power from the stream in your garden. The second is when customers plug in their electric (and hybrid) vehicles; this means that there are lots of batteries attached to the distribution network that otherwise isnât able to store electricity. Because smart grid goes beyond the meter, but one is still required, smart metering is sometimes assumed to be a subset of smart grid, although itâs perfectly possible to have a smarter grid without smarter meters and the other way round.
âSmartâ meter functionality
Examples of the functionality specified in a âsmart meterâ include:
⢠Local Area Network (LAN) communications interface â the fundamental piece of smartness ... |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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comms and controls. Normally this is either PLC, Mesh radio, GSM or IP. This is also sometimes known as the WAN (Wide Area Network)
⢠Home Area Network (HAN) communications interface â to allow a range of other devices (such as in-home displays and direct load control equipment) to access the communications network through the meter. This might also allow one utility meter to talk to another within a home, enabling meter readings from all of them (electricity, gas, and water) to be returned through a single communications infrastructure. Common solutions for the HAN are Zigbee, Z-Wave and Wireless M-Bus.
⢠Real-time reads â to enable display of useful information in the home, real-time or near real-time reads are required. This is additional to the much less frequent billing reading.
⢠Remote load control â to allow devices to be turned on or off by a pre-set pattern or the energy company on demand. This uses the HAN to communicate with the loads that are being controlled.
⢠Export metering â the ability to measure electricity flowing out of customers' premises, supporting tariffs for distributed generation, including microgeneration.
⢠Remote connect/disconnect â the ability for the electricity supply to be cut off and restored on demand by the energy company.
⢠Outage detection - to identify when power is and isnât reaching a home.
⢠Meter tamper detection - to monitor whether the meter is accessed without authorisation.
⢠Remote time synchronisation - to keep the meter's internal clock synched.
⢠Quality of supply measurement and recording - to detect and record changes in voltage and other power quality issues.
⢠Appliance inference â to identify which appliances are using energy in the home using algorithms that recognize electronic signatures and patterns of use.
⢠Display â a screen on the meter itself which shows energy usage information. |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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⢠Data entry â a keyboard in essence (could be touchscreen) giving the consumer the ability to input information.
⢠Switchable between credit and prepay - ability of the energy company to change meter functionality
⢠Payment â ability to make payments via the meter itself
⢠Encryption â to ensure that information sent over the communications network can be âreadâ by authorized personnel only
⢠Self-configuration â so that a meter can set itself up when it is installed
⢠Upgradable â the firmware in the meter can be remotely upgraded over the AMI network
⢠PHEVs â the ability to connect plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) as well as fully electric vehicles |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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Consumers donât want Big Brother controlling their thermostat and appliances
BIG BROTHER
IS WATCHING
YOU |
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By: foxdemonau
8/11/2009
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"Power storage devices automatically recharge in the off peak cycle, then source power for devices regardless of cycle."
Computers controlling critical systems already have Uninteruptable Power Supplies (UPS). The basic type (standby UPS) is a switch and battery. When the power is lost, the switch turns on the battey.
The more advanced type is the on-line UPS, which runs from the battery constantly, but also recharges the battery while mains power is avalible. This is achieved by using a rectifier circuit to manage mains power.
It would be possible for people to do set their home power up with UPS now if they are prepared to pay for it. |
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By: andy_unreasonable
8/11/2009
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>>>>IF they really wanted to reduce consumption during peak cycles they should allow, encourage and support introduction of power storage units to each building.
Power storage devices behave like battery banks.
Power storage devices automatically recharge in the off peak cycle, then source power for devices regardless of cycle.<<<<
Agree whole-heartedly. |
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By: andreihicks
8/11/2009
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What a nightmare.
Increasing people's bills for no reason - the folly is just unbelievable. |
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By: andy_unreasonable
8/11/2009
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http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/BPL-WiMa x-electricity-smart-meters-coming-to-NSW/0,1390231 66,339284567,00.htm
"We support the rollout of smart meters that can provide information to the household on their electricity consumption," the spokesperson said, adding: "Certainly some form of communication functionality is what the government needs to see."
LOL! That is so funny!
Talk about doublespeak. "Provide information to the household on their electricity consumption" - but these meters have a dual operation don't they? They *send* information to the Energy Company. |
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By: binj.again
8/11/2009
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The Rudd governmentâs move to curb golden handshakes is worthy but itâs hypocritical to point the finger at executive salaries when most politicians in the Federal Parliament will receive their own golden handshake on retirement,
I think politicians should be stripped of their obscene superannuation payments when so many families are struggling in this economic crisis.
Iâm determined to stop this rorting and will introduce the Parliamentary Superannuation Amendment (Removal of Excessive Super) Bill 2009 in the next sitting of the parliament to shut down excessive superannuation payments for federal politicians.
I find it a more than a little hypocritical that the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, criticises termination payouts given to executives when he will pocket $105,000 a year for life after he leaves the parliament.
More than 120 MPs, including the Prime Minister, will get a golden handshake.
The government has to lead by example on this. By all means, tighten those payments for fat cats who make their termination payments on the backs of hard working Australians.
However, the same standards must surely apply to politicians. In these difficult times, excessive superannuation payments for politicians must be removed.
The government must put an end to this abuse of taxpayersâ dollars.
Many of you may already know that only politicians elected before 2004 are eligible for the excessive superannuation payouts but I reckon it should apply to all.
what do you think?
http://www.stevefielding.com.au/blog/comments/time _to_shut_down_fat_cat_pollie_payouts/ |
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By: cry_misty22
8/11/2009
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The government must put an end to this abuse of taxpayers� dollars.
>>>>>>>>>
Once they have their noses in the public trough, they get so used to it that they cannot survive without all the perks, even after retirement. |
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By: c.blogger_au
8/11/2009
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| Governments were not allowed to plan for the future because the would require the "evil of taxation"; so instead public infrastructure gets sold off to make the necessary investment because apparently multi million dollar bonuses paid out of electricity fees is much more socially responsible than taxation. |
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