Butch . You are sounding like SM or arjay. The biggest installer of solar and wind here are the power generators. Then again ours have been privatized for several years. They know the writing is on the wall.
An outcome with the states yesterday was unanimous except for QLD.
This will not hold anything up.
Your loss of jobs has been happening since jobs were invented. Our unemployment is now 5.2%
The carbon tax is doing what it is supposed to. The use of coal is being squeezed off, as more and more renewables come on line.
It's the lack of ice is the problem these days, with rising ocean temperatures, we are in for more ferocious storms.

579, I do believe in climate change, I believe it is cyclical with the sun being the governing factor. I also agree with Rehctub, that money is the driving force behind the “man made” climate change scenario.

There are many anomalies in historic weather patterns such as the Middle Ages ice age or prolonged droughts such as the one that quite possibly drove the Mayans and Africans out of previously habitable lands and that occurred long before the industrial revolution.

579 please consider this scenario. Modern day environmental consciousness comes from the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. The perceived enemy was big business, the polluters. Corporations were lobbied to clean up their manufacturing and disposal processes, but that adds cost to the end product and diminishes sales volume and net profit.

The Green movement was hijacked by the “money” and they then set the agenda. The agenda was to shift the “responsibility” to the end user, us. We are responsible for pollution because we consume, big business is free to pollute and the spotlight on them to clean up their act is diminished. The ultimate illustration of this is the Carbon Tax. I does not stop pollution and it has little effect o consumer usage.

You gotta know who your enemy is, most greenies do not, their enemy drives their agenda.

Either Julia Gillard is confused or I am.
The introduction of smart meters will mean that at the highest time
of demand, ie while the evening meal is being cooked on a hot or cold
day the charging rate will here be 25 cents per kwh.
It is not a moveable activity, certainly not till before 2PM or after
10 PM where the off peak charge is 10 cents per kwh for hot water heating.

So how is knowing what the charges are help you to avoid the peak times ?
How will knowing these charges help you avoid them ?

Is Julia stupid or is it me ?
Does the Lodge cook prepare out of peak times ?

It is intended to have smart meters capable of controlling your
appliances. There are already engineering standards in place to
enable the application of systems.
It has been mainly held up because the industry has wanted to use
systems that cause very significant radio interference to communicate
with the appliances. The opposition by the Dept of Communications
and radio amateurs to broadband over power line has stopped it in Australia.
There are alternative techniques but the industry has wanted to take the easy way out.

Bazz Smart meters are smart because they know what day it is, Weekends are all off peak so to are public holidays. You have been had for years because of that.
My smart meter is four years old. Smart meters are designed to be altered and read from an office somewhere.
The smart meter is programmed remotely for your situation. Depends if you have powered hot water or not, or medical equipment.
SOG Cyclical maybe, it just happens to be at an all time high reading for CO2. Ocean temperature is Gaining and releasing more CO2 than ever.
It's hard not to blame CO2 as it is well known to be a green house gas.

The meter is not all that smart, it is the system that it is connected
to where the smarts are installed.
The plan is for each appliance to have a subnet tcp/ip address and have
power on/off controls or other functions if required.

The idea being that they do not have to shed all the load in a
particular area. They can turn off your air conditioner for say an hour
and leave someone elses running, then swap you around.

It is all to do with Julia Gillards campaign to remove the gold from
our electricity system. I am pretty sure she does not understand it,
someone has just dreamt up this gold plated network phrase and told
her that it is costing us the earth.
In Melbourne I believe they have been using the phone network to
communicate to the meters, but other areas are not sure on how to
make the connection. Those that I know of in Sydney are not connected
to a network.
They only appear to be associated with solar cell systems.

Solar power offers great power but deprives coal miners of jobs and profits, government of huge taxes, so government has a clever scheme in NSW at least to kill it. One might expect power users who feed some power back into the grid from rooftop solar cells to be charged for their net power use. Not so. They are charged about 25c for each kilowatt consumed and paid about 6c for each kilowatt fed in. The 6c is the wholesale price power companies pay for power. If they charge people retail they should pay them retail. If they charge them wholesale they should pay them wholesale. This is just plain cheating by politicians, bureaucrats and power company executives. But get the profit margin. Many businesses would think themselves very lucky to earn between 33% and 50% Gross Margin on sale of goods or services - maximum mark up of 100%. The power companies are earning a Gross Margin of over 75%, a mark up of 300%. Let's cut it down. Let's make it an election issue. This is not about saving the environment (we still export the same amount of coal for someone to burn and pollute the atmosphere)it is about dragging big profits and big taxes out of ordinary voters. Time to look at those marginal and swing electorates and see if we can get some politicians who care about the people.