[LINK] PM's plan for electricity market with smart meters

[Tom Worthington]

The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, outlined a plan to change 
the way the Australian electricity market runs, Sunday 2 December 2012. 
While the PM referred to a detailed plan, no such plan has been 
released, only a transcript of interview, on "Meet The Press": 
http://www.pm.gov.au/press-office/transcript-interview-paul-bongiorno-rafael-epstein-and-patricia-karvelas-meet-press

The PM announced that the plan would be put to the Council of Australian 
Governments meeting at the end of this week. However, the COAG Meeting 
to  25 July 2012 instructed the COAG inter-jurisdictional Taskforce to 
report by "late 2012" on additional action to deliver a regulatory 
framework that promotes a competitive retail electricity market. It 
would appear that the new plan will therefore not be able to take into 
account the taskforce's recommendations: http://www.coag.gov.au/node/431

The PM referred to giving consumers more information about their own 
power usage. This appears to be a reference to the installation of smart 
meters which give consumers details of current energy consumption and 
current charging rates. In theory this allows the consumer to delay 
electricity use to an off-peak time. However, in my view this is not an 
effective way to reduce energy consumption or costs. Expecting consumers 
to manually control large energy using appliances is not an effective 
approach. These devices should be required to have automated energy 
saving features built in. In particular all new domestic air 
conditioners should have a mandatory peak energy saving function built 
in: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2012/08/smart-off-peak-appliances-needed.html

The Australian National University, ANU Energy Change Institute, which I 
am a member of, will look at developments: 
http://energy.anu.edu.au/research/energy-efficiency-and-demand-management


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
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Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/