Half of users abandon Australian smart meter trial
Half of users abandon smart meter trial
By Andrew Colley on Jan 30, 2014 6:14 AM (2 days ago)
Audit questions price tag for under-subscribed retail program.
The Australian Government’s $100 million intelligent energy grid trial has blown its budget and failed to meet key objectives, the national auditor has found. The Smart Grid, Smart City Program, which has been shuffled among no less than four administrative departments since its establishment in 2009, is due to publish its findings within months. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has discovered that the program did not attract and retain enough household participants to its retail trial – the largest in the program – to produce “statistically useful” results. Furthermore, while the retail trial attracted less than half the optimal number of participants proposed by the consortium that won the grant for the program, AusGrid, it nonetheless cost the full $20 million budgeted for the program due to “increased implementation costs”.
SNIP