There are good opportunities for Australian utility companies to benefit from ICT innovation and investment, with ICT spending by the utilities market in Australia forecast to grow from $1,120 million last year to A$1,308 million in 2012.

Melissa Martin, senior market Analyst at IDC Australia says one example of a recent opportunity was part of the Victorian Government-mandated advanced metering infrastructure project.

Martin says Victorian utilities Jemena and United Energy Distribution have recently named key suppliers in their joint $65 million project to roll out one million smart power meters across Victoria.

"The project involves Accenture for systems integration and applications and service stream to install the meters and the two-way wireless communications infrastructure. The new smart meters will provide for remote reading, power failure notifications, remote connections and disconnections and give customers nearly real-time readings of their electricity so they can check energy consumptions and costs. Other state governments will implement similar smart meter projects over time."

According to the IDC study - Australia Utilities Information and Communications Technology Market 2008-2012 Forecast and Analysis - top business priorities in the utilities sector in 2009-2010 will include regulatory compliance, plant engineering, plant maintenance and outage, business intelligence, mobility and smart metering.

IDC’s report on the Australian utilities sector shows:

• ICT spending by the utilities market will achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.0% for the forecast period, 2008 to 2012
• The market is a small and conservative spender on ICT and constitutes 2.8% of the total enterprise market in Australia. IT services spending makes up the lion’s share of utility industry spending – at 57%
• That the tight credit markets have already slowed capital spending in the industry and this is likely to continue through 2009, with fossil-fuelled and nuclear generation projects suffering the worst due to high-risk profiles.