If you suspected that our (un)smart meters were a rip off, somebody recently gave me a clue and here it is…The introduction of smart meters in Victoria may have been a costly exercise for consumers but it’s proven a big money spinner for a handful of Australian entrepreneurs. Cameron O’Reilly, scion of Heinz food empire, former chief of  APN, along with John B. Fairfax, Smorgon family and Kerry Stokes are a few of the high-profile names to have made a killing from the sale of smart meters. They were major shareholders of Landis + Gyr, the company with about 56 per cent of market in deals to supply electricity distributors in Victoria. Their big payday came in 2011 when O’Reilly sold Landis + Gyr to Toshiba for $US2.3 billion…eMeter Corporation, meter data intelligence department of Siemens, average cost of smart meters sold to utility companies in the US is $221, and in Europe $272. A spokesperson for Australian Energy Regulator (AER) confirmed Victorian distribution companies paid an average of $346 to their suppliers. Powercor paid the highest at $423.

Looks like charge for our residential smart meters will rise above $200 this year!! Additionally, elsewhere in the world, smart meters come with NBN superfast internet and wifi. But not here, dudded again.

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