Meters

Your business will use one of two types of meters: a ‘profile’ meter or a ‘time of use’ meter.

The example invoices are in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). You’ll need to download Adobe Reader if you can’t open a document.

Profile meter

This is read on a cycle of monthly or bi-monthly reading – the previous reading is subtracted from the current reading to determine the electricity consumed. This is then charged out at a flat rate (cents per kWh). There are also fixed charges. Profile meters are usually installed for small to medium businesses.

See an  example invoice (551KB).

Time of use meter

A time of use meter is also known as a ‘logger’. The electricity meter is connected to an electronic device that can record the electricity consumption for a site every 30 minutes and store this information in a log that is then downloaded and used to invoice you.

The total consumption for the billing period (month) is charged out at a ‘cents per kWh’ rate which is broken down into time zones i.e. day & night.

If you have time of use metering, you can move your usage to different parts of the day to take advantage of lower rates when demand isn’t as high.

This type of metering is put in for medium to large businesses and is usually supplied on a contract basis. Under the industry rules, any site over 345kVA (500amps) must have time of use metering but some networks require this type of metering for a lower kVA.

See an  example invoice (860KB).

Low or high voltage metering

Time of use meters can be low voltage or high voltage. Most sites are metered at 400 Volts which is called LV metering. The other voltage is 11,000 Volts or 11kV and the meter set up requires voltage transformers to step down the voltage to 110 Volts before being metered.