Telstra strikes $71M smart meter deal to boost new energy businessTelstra strikes $71M smart meter deal to boost new energy business

The company will embed up to 4.1 million SIMs into Intellihub's smart meters over the next decade to deliver real-time monitoring and data insights.

Robert Clark, Contributing Editor

February 8, 2022

3 Min Read
Telstra strikes $71M smart meter deal to boost new energy business

Telstra has struck its biggest-ever IoT deal, a A$100 million (US$71.0 million) collaboration with smart meter firm Intellihub that takes it deeper into the fast-emerging digital energy sector.

Telstra says it will embed up to 4.1 million SIMs into Intellihub's smart meters over the next decade to deliver real-time monitoring and data insights.

The telco has more than 5 million IoT connections, of which around half a million are already Intellihub smart meters, David Burns, the head of Telstra's enterprise department, wrote on the company blog.

Figure 1: Telstra says today's energy systems are transforming so they can manage increasing flows of renewable energy between customers and the grid. (Source: sammy/Alamy Stock Photo) Telstra says today's energy systems are transforming so they can manage increasing flows of renewable energy between customers and the grid.
(Source: sammy/Alamy Stock Photo)

He said Telstra's IoT network is Australia's largest, with around 3 million sq km in NB-IoT coverage and around 3 million sq km in LTE-M coverage.

Intellihub, a four-year-old Sydney-based startup, has around 40% of the Australian and New Zealand market, with more than 1 million home meters installed.

Canadian asset management firm Brookfield acquired 50% of the company last month in a deal that set the enterprise value of the company at more than A$3 billion.

Intellihub said its smart meter and communications bridge can deliver sub-second, high-speed measurements and will help enable cloud-based virtual power plant (VPP) services.

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Light Reading.

The company says today's energy systems are transforming so they can manage increasing flows of renewable energy between customers and the grid.

VPP software will play an important role in orchestrating the distribution of these energy flows from customer activity such as rooftop solar, batteries and EVs.

"The smart meter sits between all these services and the electricity grid – transporting energy data so it can be processed, analyzed and managed by electricity retailers and networks for the benefit of their customers," Intellihub said.

'Massive market'

Telstra Energy, formed just last year, will resell 100% carbon neutral electricity to consumer customers.

Ben Burge, the head of Telstra Energy, told a recent investors event that Telstra had entered energy retailing "because it's a massive market in which we have zero market share and a tremendous overlap with our existing relationships."

"We also have the opportunity to take the technologies that we use to reduce our own power bills and make them freely available to Australian households so they can reduce their power bills."

But he said Telstra would scale up slowly in the market because of the need to get it right. "Our early growth will be measured rather than explosive," he said.

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— Robert Clark, contributing editor, special to Light Reading

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About the Author

Robert Clark

Contributing Editor, Light Reading

Robert Clark is an independent technology editor and researcher based in Hong Kong. 

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