Smart Metering and the Digital Foundation of the Energy Transition

In 2023, household and business solar accounted for 50% more capacity than large-scale renewables. Projections indicated that solar could quadruple over the next decades.

AEMO will commence its latest rule change at the end of July this year to accelerate getting smart meters into homes and businesses. This is following a recommendation from the AEMC (Australian Energy Market Commission) to have smart meters installed in all homes and small businesses by 2030. Australia’s current penetration is about 30%.

This has happened before.

In 2006, Victoria held a government-mandated rollout. It was a lukewarm success – with problematic execution resulting in consumers missing out on most of the benefits. In fact, the Victorian Auditor General’s review in 2015 was that the benefits gained from demand management and new tariffs was only 2.5% of that which had been predicted.

That was 18 years ago and things have changed a lot.

This IS the Digital Foundation

Smart meters are key to the energy transition enabling the network service providers to better manage the grid, particularly as we navigate the turbulence of the energy transition.

Anna Collyer, AEMC Chair, emphasised their importance at the Australian Energy Week conference, stating, “Smart meters are the digital foundation for a modern, connected, and efficient energy system.”  She further stressed the urgency, stating, “We need many more of them than we have now, and we need them soon, and we need them to work as we hope they will: turning power into knowledge for the benefit.

The AMEC’s draft rule proposes:

  • Accelerated deployment of smart meters – deploying smart meters to customers faster to achieve cost savings, support a modern, data-enabled energy system, and give customers access to a range of benefits sooner.
  • Access to Power Quality Data – improving network access to important power quality information so that they can better manage their networks, reduce network costs for customers, save energy, and minimise network safety risks.

9,000% more data

Accelerating the rollout of smart metering across the NEM means a potential increase of data volumes of more than 9,000%.

Double that if you store and use the other information from your reads. And more storage and compute power will be required to handle this.

Figure 1. Ignite's estimated smart meter growth over the energy transition.

Our team estimates that we could see daily read volumes of 1.44 billion in NSW by 2030, 748 million in Queensland and close to 300 million in South Australia.

Any market operator (retailer or NSP) will want to access this data in real-time for forecasting, load management and value optimisation.

Building a robust platform, capable of ingesting various forms of data (from multiple meter types) and enabling your data engineers and scientists to access, mould, test and stress will be key to success.

For energy retailers, this means increasing demand from customers seeking access to their own real-time data and a challenge to brands that have built a competitive advantage from providing such an offering. If your differentiator becomes the norm, how do you innovate next?

As we enter the really lumpy parts of the energy transition, the winners will be those who can access accurate data in real-time and make good business decisions with it. This means structuring your data assets and models with business intelligence at the heart and working with your teams to establish the right processes, rhythm and reporting to ensure you are navigating through this.

Ignite’s deep experience across the energy industry enables us to bring so much to any organisation we work with. Just ask them.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email
Print

We believe the best results come when data enables people.

Contact us to find out how we can enable yours.

Webinar Registration

Scaling Systems for Advanced Analytics
With Justin Kenny, Energy Queensland

The energy industry’s transition is underpinned by data and by data growth. With the latest rule change to accelerate the rollout of smart metering, we could see daily read volumes increase by 2.5 billion by 2030.

The big question is: how can we develop advanced analytics systems that can scale rapidly to manage this exponential data growth in any industry?

Join Justin Kenny, Advanced Analytics Platform Manager at Energy Queensland, as he shares insights on how his team successfully demonstrated the value, implemented, and scaled an advanced analytics platform that has just reached 1 million meters with 5-minute interval data.

1:00PM to 1:30PM followed by 15 minutes Q&A.