Can anyone guide me on the pros and cons of smart meters? Installing battery storage to add to my solar panels hasn’t dropped my electricity bills as much as I had expected, and I’m told that I need a smart meter. My electricity supplier is eagerly forthcoming with the advantages, but is there a downside?
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Hi Maggie1
There are a number of topics about smart metering. I have supplied a search of the term “smart meters” for you that should provide a good overview of them.
https://choice.community/search?context=topic&context_id=35245&q=Smart%20meters&skip_context=true
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It is also worth looking at your usage profile (when you use electricity and how much). If you use most of your electricity during daylight hours, a standard storage battery installation married to a PV system may not provide significant savings, as most of the solar would be consumed by usage within the house. If most usage is outside daylight hours and there is excess PV generation during the day to recharge the batteries, then there can be financial benefits.
I would be looking at your usage before deciding whether or not to install a smart meter (or to allow external access to the operation of the battery system).
The other question is do you already have a smart meter, as these have been standard for installation into new homes (post 2017) and when PV systems are installed? It is possible that you already have a smart meter which may not have been set up correctly. Looking at your meter box you should be able to determine if you have a smart meter already.
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I agree with phb, it is possible that your usage is not suited to a battery installation.
I don’t have a smart meter, but I did have a local power monitor installed with my solar system 6 years ago. It is extremely interesting, I can see the power use in my house as well as the power being made by my panels. This has an impact on when we use power, but the effect would be only minor with regard to savings as we can see if the sun is shining and know if our system is using power to be used.
In my case I can see from my power monitor that our house only uses about 5 kWh of energy from the grid each day (all the other power use comes from our solar panels), so the maximum benefit from a battery install would be the cost of that energy, less any Feed in tariff that you get for exporting that power instead. For me that would be a saving of about $2 per day. That assumes there is enough solar power spare during the day to fill up the battery. In my case, a battery would have very little impact on my bills (maximum of $800 per year) and may never pay for itself.
A smart meter will give you some of that usage information, but more importantly it may allow you to access Time of use (TOU) plans that might be some benefit financially. For example, if you don’t have excess solar power during the day, your plan may allow you to import to fill up your battery during the day very cheaply or even free. You can then use that power at night, but remember that 10-20% of the energy is lost when going through the battery.
Again, for me, TOU plans all have higher power prices in the evening which is the only time I use power, so I would be worse off with a smart meter and a TOU plan.
I suspect that your usage means the battery system is not going to have much financial benefit, but that means a smart meter won’t make much difference either. This analysis should have been done by the solar battery installer before you decided to get the battery installed in the first place.
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Smart meters have become a legislated requirement, they are being rolled out over time until all households have them. There are two types of meters, one has communications built in (it passes the readings on by itself) and the other type does not have communications (so still must be read). A household can request the non communication one if they desire. Usually when new panels or a battery is fitted then smart meters are required to be installed.
Benefits depend on how you use the meter readings and change how you use the power from the grid. If you move most of your usage to off peak and shoulder times (there are shoulder times if on time of use (TOU) tariff), there will be savings as you use more of your generated power than drawing from the grid. Batteries make less difference than panels most of the time, though if off grid then batteries are essential for storage.
I prefer the unit that communicates the readings as a daily log will be generated by the retailer and so I can see at least a daily breakdown of my past usage. At our house we went further and got real time monitoring, this required another type of meter we had to have installed in our box as well as the normal smart meter.
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Ausnet Services in Victoria has MyHomeEnergy that presents an accurate hourly display of yesterdays usage in peak as well as off peak, and solar feed in , and an export data function. It can be viewed daily, weekly, monthly, and annually.
My enphase micro-inverter solar system provides a very close approximation at 15 minute intervals.
Victoria once upon a time provided a free PowerPal to do that. No longer and one has to buy them. There are similar products that are not as easy to deal with, eg a long questionaire to find the ‘right product’ and then a form to get the product and price information, time wasting and not friendly to a basic punter. One can identify them using a net search.
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Once again, the Choice community comes through. Thank you all for the information; it’s all useful.
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As such, the OP would need to identify what state/territory she is in.
And this also means that “pros and cons” are effectively irrelevant.
To be honest I am surprised that you can get panels installed without getting a smart meter unless the OP already had one.
Do your bills show you getting a credit for excess electricity exported to the grid?
(It will be a pathetic credit, only about a few ¢/kWh exported, but a credit nevertheless.)
Note also that certain administrative processes need to be followed after a new PV + smart meter install before you will get credit. So it is also possible that the paperwork / process fell down somewhere.
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That might or might not be relevant as an increasing number of plans offer $0.00kwh FiTs. If they line item it, it would seem bad PR to put that in their customers face every month.
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Yes, it is a one-sided test.
If the credit is present then it is very likely that “the system” is working and it may be that the OP needs to look more deeply at usage / plan.
If the credit is absent then it doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem if the FIT would have been zero anyway.
In practice, it also depends on the size / age of the PV system. There was a time when PV was relatively expensive and it was perfectly possible to install a small system and then basically consume all of the electricity generated (i.e. 100% self-consumption, so FIT irrelevant anyway.)
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If your retailer/provider has a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) on offer (and you meet eligibility criteria), this may be a way to get a better financial outcome from having a battery solar system than relying solely on FIT.
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Maybe it has already been mentioned here, but there are two types of smart meters - “gross” meters, and “net” meters.
When I installed batteries in 2021, I saw that I was feeding to the grid overnight, which was actually why I installed them, but it was making no difference to my bill. After a year of to-ing and fro-ing, and some jiggery-pokery by the utility, I eventually had the gross meter changed to a net meter, and that solved the problem.
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It’s possible that a smart meter will help reduce your bills, but it’s equally (or more) likely that your bills will increase. You could be forced onto a time of use tariff in which case, depending on your usage pattern, it might cost you more. Another possibility is that you get pushed onto one of those complex peak usage tariffs, which few people understand. Again, there’s the possibility of it costing you more.
It’s not all bad news however. The Federal Government’s proposed Solar Sharer Offer, due to become available in parts of the country from mid-2026 will, subject to conditions, provide free electricity in the middle of the day. One of those conditions is that you have a smart meter.
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Agree with others below you should have had a smart meter installed with your solar panels unless they are very old. If so they may not be generating much anymore amd hence no benefit for battery. Re battery as retirees in sunny north QLD we rise at dawn and rest after sunset so we use all our power during the day. Hot water runs directly from solar panels between 10 am and 2 pm and we never run out. Even with Albos discount it would take 15 years to pay off a battery with an indicated working life of 8-10 years. When you add the risk of burning the house down with a battery fire batteries make no sense for us at all
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Got a smart electricity meter about 5 months ago , had a lightning strike on a telegraph pole outside house blew up smart meter
New one installed and was told by the installer they are very susceptible to lightning
You would think they would be smart enough to protect themselves
Could it be that the meter self-destructing protects everything in the house from the strike?
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Isopeda , nope , thats what a bunch of fuses in the meter box and in our house are doing
The speed and magnitude of a lightning induced spike that travels through an electrical circuit far exceeds the ability of a fuse to protect against that spike. Surge protectors are required and most category products have limited ability to protect beyond fairly low level hits.
There are a number of similar explanations, this from a random electrical company.
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Yes, this is what I had in mind. The question is whether @kdat25’s meter could fry quickly enough to prevent the surge from getting through to the rest of the house.
If nothing within the house was damaged when the meter fried, perhaps it did.
Well it blew the fuses or whatever in the transformer 33000 volts to 240 volts , then it popped my circuit breakers , then it went dark until Endeavour Energy got it up and running
Fortunately candles are lightning proof , no damage apart from meter
