Switchme Blog

Genesis Energy is due to offer their residential customers the option to pay different prices for electricity at periods of high and low demand, instead of a single flat rate 24 hours a day.

Spokesperson Richard Gordon says that they have installed 200,000 Smart Meters that have the ability to measure electricity consumption at half hourly intervals, and have a team in place working on differentiated tariffs.

Genesis Energy customers will still have the option to pay a flat rate if they prefer and the variable pricing won’t be available to all customers until they install another 300,000 smart meters.

Contact Energy have announced recently that they would install the new meters to 150,000 North Island customers, having already rolled out 60,000 in Christchurch.

They are already offering the variable rates to some Christchurch customers  but it will be two or three years until the time of day tariffs are available elsewhere.

The variable pricing could have a knock on affect for the environment, reducing the need for new power stations and relieving the strain on the national grid.

Research suggests that time of day tariffs could cut peak demand by 5 per cent, while allowing retailers to charge high rates at short notice to counter spikes in demand could cut peak demand by up to 20 per cent.

One complication is that some electricity meters are owned by retailers, some by consumers and others by lines companies, and there is no consensus either on who should be in charge of the change to smart meters or the technology they should be investing in.

A third of the 1.8 million electricity meters in New Zealand have already been upgraded to the new technology, but Jan Wright of the Paliamentary Commission for the Environment argues that lines companies are the natural custodians partly because they have an incentive to sell people electricity.

“If I were to wipe the slate clean and start again, I think what I would like to see would be the ownership of the meters in the hands of lines companies because they have an in-built incentive to keep peak power down, retailers hardly have it at all. To me the interests of households the environment and lines companies are pretty much aligned here.”

She says retailers are expecting to sell metering data to lines companies and if they can’t settle upon a price, there is the risk of lines companies installing their own secondary smart meters just to get the information they need. This is already happening in the Waikato.

Genesis state that they are committed to ensuring customers can access data information on their electricity consumption and advise that they are not in favour of allowing monopolies to have control of this.

TrustPower spokesman Graeme Purches is a smart meter sceptic and believes that retailers are already running up unexpected costs. Some are investing in smart metering as a way of getting rid of the manual meter readers, but in practice it has proved difficult to remotely communicate with the meters without interruptions he says.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

There have been a vast number of articles written about smart electricity meters ranging from how great they are to conspiracy theorists claiming they are an invasion of privacy.

The problem is that no one article provides all the facts in one place. We’re and tired of hearing people bleat on about how they are getting ripped off by their power company. Similarly, the marketing rubbish around smart meters generated by the electricity retailers is just as bad. Lets set some facts straight…

Firstly they save money on meter readers. This means that the man in his fancy hi-viz shirt and clipboard wont be visiting your house anymore… Instead your smart meter sends a signal to a metering company which then forwards this data to your electricity retailer.

Having access to your meter reading at any time means that retailers can start offering special deals at different times, like $15 weekends, or even incentives for saving electricity at peak load times. These special deals will attract more customers and increase revenue.

It is estimated that 5% of all homes in New Zealand are charged the wrong electricity tariff. This is because the national database (the Electricity Registry) doesn’t have the right information about your meter type. Installing smart meters means the electricity retailers check your meter type against the national database. Unfortunately for some people this results in an increase in electricity costs. Electricity retailers have offered to refund any overcharged tariffs and will write off any debt where the customer has been undercharged.

Truth about Smart Meters

A number of older houses have electricity meters on the inside. This means that you had to send your Meter Reader a key, or worse, you’d have most bills generated based on estimates. Installing smart meters means that your bills are more accurate, and your meter reader isn’t going to turn up unannounced.

Make up your own mind about whether smart meters are good or bad. At the end of the day, we have to move with the times and embrace this new technology.