Australia has set an ambitious national target to integrate smart energy by 2020. Australia’s annual electricity demand grew consistently during the period 1999 to 2009 by 2.5%. Experts believe that, Smart Grid systems produce multiple utilities and benefits. The overall societal benefit of their proposed Smart Grid strategy is 2 billion dollars over 15 years. Out of which approximately 1.14 billion dollars falls to the consumer in the form of opportunities, reliability of supply and the minimization of infrastructure cost. Ausgrid is a state owned electricity infrastructure company in Australia. It is investing 263 million dollars, while the key consortium partners are investing up to 60 million dollars for the smart energy initiative.

Developments in M2M set to speed up smart grid deployments by making the electricity grid intelligent and adding telecoms to it. The power will eventually move away from the electricity companies and be directed towards customers who will be able to control their energy consumption through sensors, M2M devices, and the internet of things (IoT). Europe and North America are rated as the most advanced adopters of smart grid and smart metering technology, but the market is expected to shift increasingly towards Asia and the developing world.

Significant progress has been made within the industry in Australia in relation to the deployment of smart technologies that, over time, will create a smart national grid.

In the future some $200 billion will be invested overall in the national energy structure (not just smart grids). The first results from projects such as Smart Grid, Smart City indicate that the results greatly exceed expectations; the same applies to companies involved in the smart meter rollout in Victoria.

With energy consumption expected to grow worldwide by more than 40% over the next 25 years’, demand in some parts of the world could exceed 100% in that time. This will produce an increase in competition for resources, resulting in higher costs. In an environment like this energy efficiency will become even more important.
As a consequence, electricity utilities could end up in a spiral of death situation similar to that of the companies that invested in the building of the internet infrastructure. They may own the means of delivering electricity and associated services, but may not be able to take advantage of the new business opportunities that will arise. This will limit their opportunities for future growth. To avoid this companies should develop a vortex of opportunities.

Smart Grid, Smart City Key findings, recommendations and comments
The Smart Grid, Smart City (SGSC) project, which ran from 2010 to 2013 in Newcastle and Sydney CBD areas, was funded by a $100 million injection from the federal government and around $390 million ‘in kind’ or otherwise from the project’s other contributors, which included entities such as Ausgrid, Energy Australia, IBM Australia, the CSIRO and several local councils.

The project was launched in 2010 and is perhaps the most comprehensive smart grid demonstration project undertaken anywhere in the world. It trialed a range of in-grid and consumer-based smart technologies with electricity suppliers for 17,000 households in order to determine whether there was an economic benefit attached to deploying the technologies across Australia.

The overarching outcome of the project is that under a medium scenario smart grids can deliver a national net benefit of $27 billion by 2034 through the development and deployment of smart grid technologies, changing consumer behavior, energy market reform, and cost reflective electricity pricing such as dynamic tariffs.