About smart meters

Smart meters differ from basic meters in a couple of ways. For starters, they measure your consumption with greater accuracy. But more importantly, smart meters track your consumption every 30 minutes and are read remotely without your distributor having to come out to your property to take a manual reading, except in circumstances where an error occurs with the equipment, but this is rare.

Apart from the increased accuracy and the ability to be remotely read, if you’re a Powershop customer, a smart meter allows you to get even more out of our usage tools through the Powershop App and Online Account. As info about your usage will be continuously measured, it means you’ll have access to almost live info about the electricity you’re using. That means you’ll be able to better manage your usage and make every day decisions to use less and save money. Most of our customers already have access to a lot of great features in the App and Online Account, but some have to manually enter their own meter reads to get a better picture of their usage between distributor reads. With a smart meter, you won’t have to do this anymore.

In some cases, it may not be suitable to install a smart meter at your property. This could be due to poor wiring, the current metering arrangement, the presence of asbestos or hazardous materials, evidence of meter tampering (which we’re required to report to regulators), or insufficient mobile reception at the meter. If this is the case, we’ll contact you and make sure you understand our concerns.

Of course! After installation, we’ll send you information on how to read your new smart meter and how to get the most out of it (spoiler alert: it’s really easy with the Powershop app).

Unfortunately not. Once the smart meter has been installed, it cannot be changed back to your old ‘basic’ or analogue meter.

Your old meter will be taken away by the installer and disposed of lawfully.

Nope. Smart meters operate on a frequency that will not interfere with other equipment in the house.

Powershop has worked hard to find a way to roll out smart meters at no cost to the customer. The smart meter installation will be free for all standard meter installations. However, if a non-standard meter installation is required, Powershop will levy a fee of no more than $100 to cover the cost of the installation. Examples of non-standard meter installations could include where minor asbestos removal, fuse replacements and link installations are needed.

Nope. That’s the great thing about smart meters. They’re read remotely so no more house visits to get a manual meter reading.