What Is A Smart Meter?

When looking to install solar systems to your home which may include solar panels or battery storage, during your transition to clean, renewable energy there are some minor upgrades that will need to be made to your property so that your solar benefits your home as much as it can. The most common change that will need to take place will be installation of a smart meter.

It is important that when making the switch to solar that your meter is upgraded to a smart meter. 

A smart meter (type 4 meter) digitally measures how much and when your household/business consumes energy which is then sent directly to your energy provider. This is how they determine your charges for your energy usage when drawing from the grid.

By upgrading to a smart meter, you will have access to:

• Solar battery storage to store solar energy for your home
• Energy management software to show you how your home uses energy

When installing solar systems, your smart meter will need some modification of its metering otherwise your home will not be able to reap the benefits/rewards of solar as all the energy generated will be sent straight to the grid instead of your home – this is gross and net metering.

For ACT and NSW residents, gross metering is used which sends all energy generated from solar straight into the national grid to be used by grid-connected properties. At the end of 2016 it came into action that NSW properties were to be changed to reflect net metering. For all new properties built in NSW, metering is set to reflect net metering.

Net metering means that when your solar generates energy, it will power your home first and any excess energy that is generated will be sent to the grid (if you don’t have storage installed) and grid-tied properties will then draw on that energy. This will not only measure the amount of energy that your home uses, but also how much energy you are exporting and importing from the grid. This will determine the amount of feed-in-credit you will receive from your energy provider.

For further information or to learn more about making the switch to solar, learn more here or alternatively call us on 1300 40 41 42 and our Technical Support Team will be able to help you out with your metering queries.