The ClimateCam billboard is the world’s first City Power Meter! It displays the amount of electricity the city of Newcastle has consumed in the past hour.

The ClimateCam billboard is located in Wheeler Place, Hunter St, Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

15 zone electrical substations

The city has been broken up into geographical zones which are fed by 15 zone electrical substations. The boundaries of these zones can be seen on the ClimateCam Zone map below.

Find out the electrical consumption in your zone

To read detailed information on the electrical consumption of your zone click on the suburb or zone number on the map or click on your zone listed under More on This Topic.

Total electricity consumption

You can find out the total electriciity consumption for the city of Newcastle on our Zone totals page.

Actual electricity consumption data in megawatt-hours (MWh) for the City of Newcastle is provided by EnergyAustralia.

Methodology

Readings are taken each hour from the 15 zone electrical substations in the Newcastle Local Government Area (LGA).

The graphs for each zone show hourly electricity consumption in megawatts per hour, along with historical monthly and annual consumption data.

These readings are collated to provide the graph below, which shows total electricity consumption in megawatts per hour for the whole city. Historical monthly and annual data for the City is also recorded, along with greenhouse gas emissions from electricity.

Coefficients

Megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity are converted to tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO_2-e). This allows the City to see the level of greenhouse gas emissions being produced as a result of their electricity consumption. For every Megawatt hour of electricity consumed by the City, one tonne of greenhouse gas is released into the atmosphere. To give you an idea of that volume, one tonne of carbon dioxide would fill an average family home. And the average household produces enough carbon dioxide from electricity use each year to fill the home five times.

The coefficients used to convert electricity to tonnes of CO_2-e are outlined in the table below. These factors have been derived by CSIRO from estimates of NSW power station efficiency, and publicly-available electrical transmission and distribution loss data provided by NEMMCO.

By using electricity generated from a renewable resource (like wind, sun, sustainably-grown organic matter, hydropower etc.) you can personally reduce CO₂ emissions. You can access electricity from these sources through the National Green Power Scheme.