What is a Smart Meter?

A Smart Meter is a digital meter which allows electricity retailers to collect your usage information remotely. That’s right, no more meter readers coming onto your property to manually read your meter. This one meter will allow you access to time of use electricity rates as the meter can record when you’re using power, as well as how much.

Often when you’re installing a solar system on your home or business, you will be required to update your electricity meter to a new solar programmed Smart Meter. SunStak will organise and pay for any change to your meter when it’s required. This will generally occur two weeks after the installation of your solar system.

The new and the old

Feed-In-Tariff (FIT)

A Smart Meter will also record how much power you’re exporting to the grid, if you have any excess solar power during the day. Using your SunStak monitoring you will be able to clearly see how much power you have sent to the grid each day.

The rate you receive from selling back to the grid is called a Feed-In-Tariff and will vary depending on the electricity retailer you choose, and the plan you’re on.

While the FIT will vary, it is always better to consume as much of your solar energy as you can as the rate you’re paying for electricity is often 2-3 times more than the rate that you receive from selling it back to the grid. Ask us about ways to consume more electricity during the day.

We have done the hard work for you and teamed up with Energy locals who offer some of the lowest usage rates, and some of the highest Feed-In-tariffs.

Net Metering

When you have a solar system installed on your property you will be generating power during the day. This power is supplied firstly to your household electricity loads (heating, cooling etc), with any excess being fed back into the grid for a FIT.

For a single phase property, the equation is very simple. Excess power feeds back into the network. But what about three phase power?

Three phase scenario

This is a higher level concept for those that want to understand kW counting across multiple phases. If the example is not clear, please get in touch and we will be happy to explain this scenario for those curious.

For example, you install a single phase inverter on a three phase property. If we assume you’re producing 1kW on Phase A, and consuming 1kW on Phase B, what do you think will be recorded at the meter?

Zero! That’s right. The Smart Meter sees all your production and consumption across all three phases.