Time of Use Electricity Tariff

The autumn-early winter electricity bill arrived recently. This one had an extra $109 for a "service truck" visit in June. On querying this item, it was as I suspected, a cost for the service visit when the meter changed over in January. It has taken 6 months for the distribution company to bill the retail company.
While talking to the helpful operator I queried the low solar buyback tariff and got switched to their solar division.
To my surprise, I found that there may be a way to receive Victoria's higher 60c buyback rate for my generated electricity as well as keeping the peak/off-peak rates. This is now called the Time-of-use tariff and the rates compare well with my current tariff.
So now I will try and navigate the maze of forms and possibly appeal processes to see if we can action this. It seems this change has occurred recently following confusion between distribution companies, smart-metering roll-out and possibly other factors.
So although my bill is less than at a similar time last year, showing the effect of the solar generation, the buyback increase will also affect the overall costing.
Anyone who lives in their own home, has a reasonable north-facing roof and a couple of thousand dollars spare would be well advised to go solar. The economics, with the current REC's system and increasing competition in the industry, is obvious.
So if you still have the $1800 bonus the government have given us, why not invest in your own solar generation system?

Peak and Off-peak -will this tariff remain under smart meters?

When getting the new electricity meter installed we encountered the peak/off-peak tariff issue. We were asked by our electricity retailer, who promotes solar systems, to get a time switch installed so we could keep the off peak electrical boost to our solar hot water. This tended to suggest the peak/off-peak tariff is intact.
The installers of the PV system didn't know and veered off the issue when I talked to them. But this was before a large number of installs and changeovers to smart meters had begun. so I hope they might be more familiar with the issue now. The electricity company representative seemed to be the most knowledgeable and helpful over the issue, particularly in getting the smart meter installed after "discovering" the off-peak issue.
The Department of Primary Industries Smart Meters & My Electricity bill information indicates that some off-peak tariffs will remain  until time of use rates become available "Once time-of-use rates become available, all energy used in off-peak times can be charged at off-peak rates. Currently, only specific appliances can benefit from off-peak rates."  Hopefully Solar Hot Water is a specific appliance or my other half is going to lose his temper (again!).
BUT time will tell and it will be very interesting getting the first bill, for a number of reasons!
One of my colleagues received her bill recently and has generated $100 excess over the electricity used. She has a 1.5 KWh system with a smaller household (and possibly much greener) so we will be comparing notes over billing and performance.