[LINK] Smart electricity meters displace NBN?

[Tom Worthington]

Victorian electricity distributor SP AusNet has announced it will
install 680,000 WiMax connected smart meters by 2013, with about 40,000
installed by mid 2010:
<http://www.sp-ausnet.com.au/CA2575630006F222/Lookup/MediaReleases2009/$file/069AMILaunchMRNW221009.pdf>.

These will be used for smart grid applications to allow better
management of energy use and cut carbon emissions. But an obvious
additional step would be to include WiFi in the home meters. This could
be used to communicate with appliances in the home and as a by-product
provide a broadband Internet service to rival the NBN.

The meters are part of the Victorian Government Advanced Metering
Infrastructure program (AMI). They will record electricity consumption
in at least half hour increments, be remotely read and allow the
electricity distributor to locate outages:
<http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/dpinenergy.nsf/LinkView/4EC2E4EA42B821FCCA2572B10079A930A8BAF6E4E66C900FCA2572B20004C403>.

The system will use Motorola WiMAX WAP 650 base stations on 2.3GHz
connected by a microwave system. It will use a "flat" IP architecture:
<http://mediacenter.motorola.com/content/detail.aspx?ReleaseID=12022&NewsAreaID=2>. 


More in my blog at:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/10/smart-electricity-meters-may-displace.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274