Australian electricity is Smarter electricity

The way we use electricity in our homes is about to change.

Major improvements being made to the network by the government and by electricity suppliers in Australia will revolutionise the way power is supplied to us, the measuring of our usage and even the way we pay.

It’s called the ‘Smart Grid’, and it’s all about the way the electricity is managed, replacing a system that has been in place for a century.

It starts at your house. In a world-first, new meter boxes are being installed to homes, around 10 million in total (at a cost of up to $4.6 billion). These boxes act as processing units that will control the way our homes are provided with electricity.

To begin with, the boxes improve the way electricity companies can measure how much power we use. Instead of being read by door-to-door representatives every couple of months, the box relays information directly back to a central data repository.

This will allow electricity companies to not only charge more accurately for the power used, but will give them information on how, when and in what conditions power is used. And the data is real-time. This means that if a problem arises with your power supply, not only will you not have to call the electricity company to let them know, but by the time you’ve noticed the outage, it’s most likely already being corrected.

The new boxes work in the other direction as well. Your electricity supplier will be able to control elements of your power supply when necessary, limiting supplies to certain areas if there is any danger of a complete blackout.

While these features alone will revolutionise the industry and save Australian electricity suppliers up to $7.5 billion, it is the future applications of the technology that are most exciting.

Home appliance manufacturers are experimenting with a piece of revolutionary hardware called Zigbee. Zigbee collects data on electricity usage at a household level and communicates it to appliances. In other words, the electricity supply talks to the electrical appliances in your house. So, when instructed by the user, your fridge could defer it’s defrost cycle until a cheaper power usage time or your washing machines could run when power load is at its lowest and therefore, ultimately, cheapest.

On hot days, power companies could remotely control all air conditioners to run for 15 minutes, then switch off for 15 minutes, etc., halving the pressure on the system. Users could overrule this, but would be charged an additional premium for doing so.

By communicating with the entire network, power use can be regulated with more accuracy, both regionally and on a household level.

Of course, as with any development that involves the gathering of information, some have security concerns. The potential level of information is so intricate that, theoretically, the power company could identify the fact that your toaster is not functioning as well as it should, and this information could be onsold to a dealer or manufacturer who could market aggressively toward you. It is through strict government regulations, most agree, that this would be best monitored.

While aspects of the program have already begun, such as the installation of an optical-fibre network between substations, and 12,000 sensors already installed on Energy Australia’s network, many of the household application are considered to be at least 5 years off.

It may be hard for some to accept the ‘Big Brother’ nature of innovation such as this, but in a world where excess, wasteful use of resources should be monitored, and money in a household needs to be saved wherever possible, the Smart Grid may be the genius idea we’ve been looking for.