Most properties in the UK also still use rotating wheel kWHr meters too!
Why?
So smart meters have quickly gained a VERY bad reputation here, which will take a lot of work (and I suspect along time) to recover from.
Dave:I'm aware that like us, you guys have a time based spot price for wholesale electricity - which very much lends itself to electronic meters. I'm also aware of lots of conspiracy theories among domestic consumers about smart meters (they are alive and kicking down here too).
The fact is that electricity retailers in a spot market environment ostensibly take the variable wholesale prices (for purchases on the spot market) and they convert these to fixed retail tariffs to domestic customers (like you and me) - plus a nice profit margin for their shareholder. The problem with the price of fixed retail tariffs that result from this Wholesale/retail conversion process is that they are ALL based on averages and therefore they suffer from the law-of-averages.
So- to give you a sense of the variation between peak and normal prices that the averaging process must accommodate on the wholesale, spot market - the underlying commodity price for Australia sits at about $60-$80/mwhr, but the maximum price can (and has) risen as high as $12,000/mwhr (this is called Voll). Your electricity market is similar.
What this means is that your fixed retail tariff assumes that your usage pattern is the same as someone with a much more "peaky" usage profile. Which means that there is a whole lot of cross subsidization that occurs within a particular tariff cohort. This is great if you happen to be a consumer with a "peaky" profile, but it's not so good if you happen to have a normal usage profile!
So, the interesting question about cross subsidizing in retail fixed tariffs is - who is paying and who is being subsidized? Well it works-out (not surprisingly perhaps) that folk who have lots of electrical appliances and who invariably have high usage tend to be the ones who have "peakier" load profiles.
Moral of the story - fixed retail electricity tariffs invariably impose a perverse outcome where the poor subsidize the rich. Spinning wheel kwhr meters reinforce this perversity and they are a relic of a bygone era when the electricity industry was a vertically integrated monopoly. Fact is that lots of changes have been made since those prehistoric times - I for one am not happy to support wealthy (read -high usage) electricity consumers and I am very happy to be using a smart meter
Now, I'm sorry to read that in your part of the world changing meters is an impediment to changing retailers, but this is a problem with your regulation rules (it's not a problem with smart meters). Down here, all the meters are owned by a separate entity (monopoly service provider with regulated prices). We keep the same meter when we change retailer!
Don