The Age has an article on difficulties with Victoria's smart meter rollout leading the government to suspend it for the time being (not wanting any problematic issues during an election year it seems) - Plug pulled on smart meter plan.

THE state government has temporarily pulled the plug on Victoria's $2 billion smart energy meter program.

Energy Minister Peter Batchelor last night announced an indefinite moratorium on the rollout of the new technology to every home across the state - because of concerns pensioners and the poor would be hardest hit by higher electricity prices.

Mr Batchelor made the announcement, an election-year embarrassment for the government, after meeting representatives of the poor, including St Vincent de Paul and the Victorian Council of Social Service.

He made it clear the government intended to push ahead with the scheme, but gave no indication as to how long the moratorium might last.

The plan to install smart meters in all 2.5 million Victorian homes and small businesses over the next four years, and introduce a new time-of-use pricing regime, has been beset by controversy.

The government argues the new technology, which can read a household's energy use every 30 minutes, will enable people to monitor their use in peak periods and turn on high-energy appliances such as dishwashers during off-peak times. ...

VCOSS chief executive Cath Smith last night welcomed the moratorium, saying Mr Batchelor had recognised that people who spend a lot of time at home during the day or who could not shift their energy use to off-peak times could suffer. ...

Mr Batchelor said last night: ''We are committed to ensuring the transition to a new pricing structure is managed carefully and sensibly.'' He promised to regularly review the effect of time-of-use tariffs on families.

But he defended smart meters, saying they would help Victorians tackle climate change.

The backlash against the smart meters installed in Texas by utility Oncor doesn’t seem to be dying down. Actually the protesters are getting more organized and turning to social media. A group called Smart UR Citizens — whose members describe themselves as “a group of Texas citizens that are fighting the unrealistic utility charges which we believe are caused by the Smart Meter” — has a new web site, an online petition, an intro video and an online survey, and is inviting community members to submit videos and comments about their experiences.

The small group is also holding rallies outside of Oncor’s headquarters and using social media to get the word out. Dallas Morning News reporter Elizabeth Souder reported in the newspaper’s blog Texas Energy and Environment yesterday that the group was supposed to hold a rally Thursday afternoon — as she put it: “The protesters will be the ones waving red shop flags.”

Oncor seems to have been making a variety of attempts to address the smart meter backlash. The utility has been releasing information about weekly tests in local areas, including OakCliff, Temple and Killeen.

But utilities are still trying to figure out the best way to communicate to these types of customers about transitioning to smart meters. As this IDC Energy Insight report say, utilities “have not thought through the implications of new technology and products on customer relationships or the business process.” In other words, utilities are not at all prepared for the increased amount of communication, education and interactivity that will be required from installing new smart grid technology.

It seems the "solar tower" dream never dies, with the ABC reporting that a (hitherto unknown to me) company is talking about building 3 plants in Victoria (I'm assuming this is a retread of the old solar tower scheme planned for the area, not a CSP plant - details are sparse) - Asian company eyes solar tower development

An Asian development company has lodged applications for planned solar towers in north-west Victoria.

Suntec Solar is not revealing the exact locations of its three preferred sites at this stage, but says they are each about 800 hectares of private land and each would be the site of a 200-megawatt solar tower.

The company says it has shifted its focus for solar tower development to north-west Victoria because the land is flat, the weather is ideal and the sites are close to transmission infrastructure.

It says meteorological and solar testing has found the sites are suitable and will finish archaeological and environmental surveys by March.

InfranetLab has an interesting post on the changing geography (and fish-ography) of the east African lake system - Wet Borders: Microslums and Meanders.

Migingo Island, home to some 300 residents, sits precariously within Lake Victoria along the watery border of Uganda and Kenya. Its undetermined origins declare that either: a) two Kenyan fisherman settled there in 1991, or b) a Ugandan fisherman also claimed to have settled there in an abandoned house in 2004. Regardless, since that time, the place has really taken off – becoming what one journalist called a microslum. Each successive year that the level of Lake Victoria decreased, the originally rocky tip exposed greater landmass to occupy. So, complicating matters is Lake Victoria’s rapidly receding lake. But why here, why such a precious outpost?

Its all about the perch, Nile perch. Fishing in Lake Victoria, one of the largest bodies of fresh water, is essential to some of the 30 million Africans that live within its reach. Nile perch was introduced here in the 1950s and has risen to become an essential part of the economy of Lake Victoria’s fishery. (The perch was so successful in rejuvenating the fishing economy here that it decimated nearly 350 native fish species to rise to the top of the chain.) This success means that in recent years the Nile perch populations have dwindled and many native species are thought to be recovering. But really the whole Nile perch story, which in a Jared Diamond-esque way utlimately leads to weapons, is epic enough to be a film in its own right.

Fishing supports an export industry in East Africa whose value is estimated at US$250 million annually. And the convenience of Migingo Island in this tightening economy (and shrinking ecology) has placed extreme presue on the island, with Ugandan police patrolling the waters and intercepting catch from Kenyan fisherman. A claim by several locals involved in the dispute has even lobbied that the fish are Kenyan because of which side of the border they breed on. Another strange claim is that the land belongs to Kenya but the water belongs to Uganda. And the dispute continues as on the island itself Ugandans and Kenyans exist within different ‘neighborhoods’ on this tiny acre of rock.