FCF, to reiterate my earlier post, yes the Owner does have a say. After all, just because a current tenant wants a smart meter doesn’t mean that future tenants or any future resident / owner will.
As a matter of interest, when the works in our Plan’s Meter Room were undertaken in November 2010 where smart meters were installed in association with the solar installations, but with each set on a flat-rate buy-in tariff, the electricity distributor took the opportunity to require some concurrent upgrades to the fuses and isolators serving the Lots involved.
As the entirety of those works was on Common Property I had the electrical contractor invoice the Owners Corporation (O/C) for those, and I then invoiced the respective Proprietors for a reimbursement of the component costs; that is those for the works directly involving their Lots.
Anyway, I just checked the contractor’s invoice, and the cost to remove the old analogue meters, to supply and fit smart meters, to wire and re-wire each, to replace the fuses with circuit breakers and to fit new isolators (main switch) in accordance with the opportunistic requirements of the electrical distributor averaged $913.00 for each Lot, excluding the solar cabling and the gross (feed-in) meter.
That might give Blueman’s tenant something else to consider; as PeterC once said, it’s not easy being green! (and as Whale said: it can be costly too).