Utility company Energy Australia is planning to build a $50 million WiMax wireless network as part of a smartgrid roll-out in the Sydney-Newcastle area. The development will, among other things, enable time-based pricing, which has been successfully resisted by consumers of a similar system in Victoria, after they discovered the system would see them paying more for electricity.
The NSW WiMax network will provide communication with up to 2 million “smart meters” on the electricity grid, according to Energy Australia MD, George Maltabarow. It is to be phased in at 140 locations over the next 18 months. It will transmit two-way information between field devices, back-end systems and households.
Spectrum for the network is being provided by Wireless Broadband Australia, part of Kerry Stokes’ Seven group, which has inherited the spectrum held by Unwired. Energy Australia will use 15MHz of the 2.3GHz spectrum.
The network will also involve 12,000 smart monitoring devices on the electricity grid, up to 3000 mobile field computers, 200 major zone substations and a “smart village” in Newington, NSW.
Energy Australia claims to have rolled out 800km of new fibreoptic cables, installed hundreds of communications switches and deployed carrier-grade IP technology to connect more than 200 key substations and depots.
It says the 12,000 monitoring devices will collect data that allow Energy Australia to reduce outages and to work towards managing distributed energy sources such as solar and storage devices.
It will also allow the introduction of time-based pricing – though a similar development has caused consternation and delays in Victoria’s smartgrid program. The pricing regime there has been put on hold and the system placed under review after a consumer backlash and a damning report by the Victorian Auditor-General.
