POLL | Would you buy into a smart meter that turns off the power if you’ve used too much?

Eskom's plan to install a smart meter that could monitor and manage how much power you use has sparked debate.

The power utility wants to roll out the meters to every household within the next four years as it battles to keep the lights on.

According to Business Report, the programme will cost at least R16bn and the utility hopes to recover more than 7,000MW for the grid.

The meters use a demand management system which Eskom says will manage “load-limiting” as an alternative to load-shedding.

“Normally, electricity suppliers install geyser controls in consumers’ houses, but instead of doing that we would rather say to you this is 60kWh you are supposed to get, I am load-limiting you to 10Mk/Wh ... I’m supposed to load-shed you but I will not. Instead, switch off [appliances] because if you don’t switch off your geyser, for example, it’s going to cut you off anyway.

“If the excess load is not removed by a customer during the load-limiting stage, the meter will disconnect the customer for a period determined by the utility — anything between 30 minutes to two hours.”

It can also allow a customer to decide when to use electricity based on how much it will cost at a particular time. On smart prepaid meters the amount used is taken from a prepaid balance.

While some backed the idea, saying it was better than rolling blackouts, others predicted Eskom would mess up the rollout. 

MD for revenue consulting at Ntiyiso, Trevor Mupeti, told TimesLIVE smart metering was a good idea but often flawed in execution.

“On closer inspection, it has been revealed that the introduction of prepaid metering not only refrained from assisting municipalities improve their revenue status but also, more often than not, accelerated the revenue erosion prevalent in most municipalities. A surprising but true fact within many municipalities.”

He said the reason was that loopholes were being taken advantage of.

Hilton Trollip, a fellow at the Global Risk Governance Programme at UCT and an independent consultant in energy research, told Business Day in March there may be a smart grid in the next 20 to 30 years.

This grid would enable the sharing of moments of peak demand or low demand from customers and peak and low supply from variable power sources across a large area and among many people.

It would be managed by artificial intelligence that would automatically balance supply and demand and could automatically switch off power supply to appliances such as geysers and freezers when there was excess demand and switch them on again when there was excess supply.

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