Electricity "smart meters" being used for dumb reasons

Alliance Party media release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday 1 July 2009

The Alliance Party says big power companies should be required to install electricity "smart meters" that would help consumers, rather than introducing "dumb meters" to boost their own profits.

Alliance Party energy spokesperson Ian Tinkler says new technology like smart meters had the potential to help New Zealand manage our use of electricity to benefit everyone.

He says high-tech smart meters would mean people would pay less for power, and power use would be more efficient.

"Smart meters can be set so appliances like driers and dishwasher switch on when overall demand is low."

"As well as providing more affordable household power, pollution is reduced by less need to burn coal or gas to make electricity."

But because our electricity system is set up to generate profits rather than to provide affordable power, these advances were being blocked by self interested power companies.

Power companies were introducing a limited form of the "smart meter" technology that would only benefit power companies, not consumers.

Mr Tinkler says the current free market electricity system encourages the big power companies to create waste so they can keep prices high.

He says power companies have been allowed to operate like vampires off the New Zealand public.

"We have a bizarre situation where the power companies are being allowed to run our electricity system for their own benefit, a system introduced by National in the 1990s and shamefully continued by the last Labour Government."

It is time to admit that the changes made in the electricity industry in the 1990s have not worked, he says.

Mr Tinkler says a free market system can never work in an industry like power where natural barriers to entry exist.

The Alliance Party says the electricity system in New Zealand should be publically owned and operated to generate affordable power, with an integrated and planned system.

ENDS

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