Having a smart meter gives you, the consumer, the power to better monitor your usage, and therefore help to assist in reducing your energy costs.
Smart meters help you track your energy use in real time, making bills more accurate and helping you find ways to save. Smart meters support solar and battery systems, enable remote reads, and reduce the risk of estimated billing.
They also play a significant role in Australia’s transition to renewable energy, by providing real-time data for grid supply and demand management, while harnessing rooftop solar generation and optimising battery storage to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
Benefits provided by smart meters include:
Where old (legacy) meters required manual readings dependent on physical access at the property, smart meters send meter data straight to the metering coordinator, who passes it to the retailer (e.g. Diamond Energy) for billing purposes.
With remote communication of meter reads, more customers will be billed on actual, as opposed to estimated, data, meaning that their bills will more accurately reflect the actual consumption at the property over a given billing period.
Because smart meter data is recorded and communicated frequently, metering coordinators and retailers can more quickly detect when reads are estimated or missing. This allows us to reach out to customers to resolve any issues sooner than if the meter was only being read once every three months, as with a legacy meter.
You can access your meter data via our customer portal, MyAccount.
Smart meters enable you to see when your property uses electricity throughout the day and identify trends in your usage, which gives you the ability to make informed decisions about the best electricity plan, tariff structure or home energy management tools for your circumstances.
We believe in empowering customers to choose what works best for them. We’ve also provided some tips for efficient electricity usage here.
Smart meters record and communicate reads frequently throughout the day, providing access to time of use pricing structures that have varied rates for peak, off-peak and sometimes other rates (e.g. shoulder, solar sponge, controlled load) based on time of day.
As Australia’s energy system transitions to increasingly rely on renewable energy sources, including small scale generation such as rooftop solar, more flexible pricing options are available to consumers. Contact us about available time of use tariff structures in your area.
Newer technologies such as battery storage and electric vehicles, in conjunction with the national smart meter rollout and infrastructure improvements, are allowing the energy industry to reimagine how best to meet the country’s needs and provide value to consumers.
For example, check out our Virtual Power Plant (VPP) for solar and battery customers.
When you install solar, your meter needs to be upgraded to record the electricity you feed into the grid so that you can receive feed in credits.
The smart meter will enable you to:
As a long-term innovator in renewable energy retail and generation, we are proud to participate in the ever-advancing uptake of solar and battery systems by hosting several battery programs and VPP (Virtual Power Plant) initiatives. Our VPP initiatives are designed to champion the collective benefits of battery technology, which is expected to play a major role in Australia’s energy transition.
Through VPP community sharing of solar generation, customers can be a part of our renewable generation portfolio and help us to manage energy load across our customer base. Find more information about our innovative VPP solutions here.
