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Smart Grid Technologies
Published in Stuart Borlase, Smart Grids, 2017
The standard business model of electricity retailing involves the electricity company billing the customer for the amount of energy used in the previous month or quarter. Some utilities offer prepayment metering as an alternative to requiring deposits from customers with poor credit or customers who wish to budget their electricity spending more closely; in a few countries—notably the United Kingdom—customers who have not paid their bills are required to have prepayment metering [1]. This service requires the customer to make advance payment (prepayment) before electricity can be used. If the available credit is exhausted, then the supply of electricity is cut off at the prepayment meter. In the United Kingdom, mechanical prepayment meters used to be common in rented accommodations. The disadvantages of these included the need for regular visits to remove cash and risk of theft of the cash in the meter. Modern solid-state electricity meters, in conjunction with smart cards, have removed these disadvantages and such meters are commonly used for customers considered to be a credit risk. In the United Kingdom, one type of prepayment system is the PayPoint network, where rechargeable tokens can be loaded with the amount of money that the customer has available. In South Africa, Sudan, and Northern Ireland, prepaid meters are recharged by entering a unique, encoded 20 digit number using a keypad. This makes the tokens, essentially a slip of paper, very low in cost to produce. Smart meters enable the provision of prepayment service without any tokens at all, such as via a “central wallet” approach as shown in Figure 3.163. This approach further reduces the cost of prepayment metering [1].
Smart Meters and Advanced Metering Infrastructure
Published in Stuart Borlase, Smart Grids, 2018
Aaron F. Snyder, David Kranzler, Robby Simpson, Stuart Borlase, Mary Carpine-Bell, James P. Hanley, Chris King, Eric Woychik, Alex Zheng
The standard business model of electricity retailing involves the electric utility company billing the consumer for the amount of energy used in the previous month or quarter. Some utilities offer prepayment metering (also known as payment metering) as an alternative to postpayment programs or to customers who wish to budget their electricity spending more closely. In a few countries, notably the United Kingdom, consumers who have not paid their bills are required to have prepayment metering [5]. This service requires the consumer to make advance payment (prepayment) before electricity can be used. If the available credit is exhausted, then the supply of electricity is cut off at the prepayment meter. In the United Kingdom, mechanical prepayment meters used to be common in rented accommodations, and included a coin slot to collect payment!. The disadvantages of these included the need for regular visits to remove cash and risk of theft of the cash in the meter. Modern electronic electricity meters, in conjunction with smart cards, have removed these disadvantages, and such meters are commonly used for consumers considered to be a credit risk. One type of prepayment system relies upon rechargeable tokens that can be loaded with the amount of money that the consumer has available. In South Africa, Sudan, and Northern Ireland, prepaid meters are recharged by entering a unique, encoded 20-digit number using a keypad. This makes the tokens, essentially a slip of paper, very low in cost to produce. Smart meters enable the provision of prepayment service without any tokens at all, such as via a “central wallet” approach, as shown in Figure 13.3. In the central wallet approach, smart meters with remote disconnect and reconnect functionality are integrated without the need to access the smart meter, use physical tokens, smart cards, or keys to transfer credit to the meter. This is achieved with all customer accounts held in a central back-end system, unlike the traditional local wallet approach in which payment information is stored on the meter. The approach also provides customers with multiple engagement and payment channels, price plans, and incentives by providing enhanced customer service through web portal and smart phone self-service. A central wallet approach is also easier to manage, allows for changes to be made to the account instantly, and is more tamper-resistant, as well as being less expensive to implement and operate [5].
Sustainability assessment of two Australian hydro megaprojects
Published in Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development, 2019
Glen Currie, John Black, Colin Duffield
In 1997, the New South Wales Government and the State Electricity Commission of Victoria created a joint venture - Snowy Hydro Trading Pty Ltd (SHTPL) - to trade electricity generated by Snowy 1.0 in the National Electricity Market. The Commonwealth formally joined SHTPL as a shareholder in February 2000. On 28 June 2002, the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Authority was corporatized when merged with Snowy Hydro Trading Pty Ltd to become Snowy Hydro Limited - an electricity generation and retailing company that owns, manages and maintains Snowy 1.0. Snowy Hydro Limited includes nine hydro-electric power stations and sixteen large dams connected by 145 kilometres of tunnels and 80 kilometres of aqueducts. It also owns and operates two gas-fired power stations in Victoria and one in New South Wales, three diesel power stations in South Australia, and owns two electricity retailing businesses (Red Energy and Lumo Energy).