Thank you for your post, hopefully you will find good advice here. I have moved your post into this topic as it is broadly about the issues you currently face. I am sure others here will be able to give you advice about possible steps to take.
Your Energy Retailer should as you say be able to provide you with their comparison rate and discount amount. As they haven’t appeared to do so the following Qld Govt page on the web may offer some avenues to follow.
More specifically there is an Energy & Water Ombudsman (they are referenced on the web site I linked to) who is there to investigate complaints re Energy Retailers from consumers:
Welcome and good luck. In your quest for a good deal be wary that virtually all suppliers can and do play similar games. If one does your plan over and you move on, the new one can be in the queue to do the same so your outcome is deuce, or even ‘advantage supplier’.
Whilst at the second largest shopping caentre in FNQ, Stockland at Earlville today, the power went out when I as at the Woollies checkout but the emergency power came on.
Shortly after when I returned to our vehicle in the underground carpark, emergency sirens were going off and an announcement instructed everyone to exit the centre as directed.
It took almost 1 hour from when I started the vehicle to when I finally reached the road outside.
There was certainly no “directions” provided, just a traffic jam that would make Manhattan traffic look like the Autobahn, so just as well there was no real emergency.
It turns out that an Ergon power pole that I had actually driven past on my way to the shopping centre caught on fire thus causing the blackout.
Lucky that we had around 100 mm of rain throughout last night so the conditions were not hot and dry…
What a pathetic excuse for a power network, and at the prices that Ergon charges, whoever said that crime does not pay.
It could have been a pole mounted transformer. These can fail from time to time and like a car, it is not usually known then they are likely to fail/break down. It could also have been a failed/faulty insulator causing earthing and resulting timber fire.
There is an old trick for substation workers where they take a AM radio into substations…and if there was a problem with one of the transformers, the AM radio would hum. Modern transformers with pending faults are now detected by other means…but some of the older generation substation workers still use the AM method as a backup.
Rain, dust buildup, bird poo, cracked insulators etc can can a insulator fault…the earthing current can cause fires on anything flammable it passes through until the protections cut in. If the timber pole surface is damp from rain, the current can earth/travel along the pole…
Absolutely disgraceful. And the article stated that they were part of the Victorian to SA interconnector so one would think that they would be relatively new.
No mention of wind speeds but obviously way below the Category 5 Cyclone wind speeds which destoyed 132KV towers in FNQ during Cyclone Larry, and we now have a new and much stronger 275KV line all the way up the coast in FNQ.
Some more information on the relationship between wholesale power prices and consumers’ power bills.
Also an interesting graph of the price of gas and electricity. I wonder if the east coast gas price bottleneck will be slowly stabilised as export contract prices drop in response to the new global supplies coming on line. If so this will shift the short term economics more in favour of the gas as transition fuel idea - it will of course do nothing about the environmental consequences of burning more gas.
Part of the problem is that these export contracts are fairly long and often have price variations built in related to the price of oil. The result is the price of gas is influenced by geopolitical events not just its level of supply and demand and so the price does strange dances.
OT but related - Just received notice our gas prices are going up about 8% next month. It seems like the price structure is more akin to what the market will bear before the pollies need to step in for their own survival.
While shopping around after receiving the notice I discovered the Victoria government comparison site seems hopelessly inaccurate on current plans as well as filtering.
It estimation of my annual gas use based on its glib questions was wildly disparate from reality so no trust in it at the best of times for gas. In contrast it did a decent job with electricity last year.
Its the sun! 44C ambient and in direct sunlight melted the towers that were made of nothing but the very best metals. Renewable energy, bah humbug. Right!
That is true, and the winds tend to have a shearing effect there there can be different directions and speeds over very small distances. This increases the forces and loadings on larger objects such as HV steel towers making them more prone to failure in such conditions. A tornado could potentially place say a northern directional force on the tower and a southern directional force on the wires/conductors, resulting in effect in a twisting action.
Cyclone winds are generally from the same direction and while gusty, place force generally in one direction.
In Queensland, special towers/poles are used in cyclone prone areas. These structures are stronger than the standard structures and are designed to take high wind loads directly on the structure and wind load from the conductors/wires.
Queensland structures aren’t designed for tornadoes, but it is likely that those designed for cyclone regions may better withstand a tornado compared to a standard tower. It is also likely they would fail under extreme tornado events…and most likely have done in the past.
To design, engineer and construct structures to cater to any possible weather event or natural event (e.g. earthquakes, landslides, floods etc) would be cost prohibitive and would be engineering for risks that in most cases may never exist. The network is also designed for n-1 (loss one part of the network) for maintaining supply. The interconnectors may cope with loss of one circuit (n-1) under most conditions, but loss of two circuits (n-2), such as double circuit towers collapsing, under high load conditons these interconnecter weren’t designed for us a different matter.
States networks are becoming more reliant on these interconnectors to maintain supply under more and more operating conditions…which has been accelerated through generation closures…and there has been talk of multiple interstate interconnectors in the future to catch up with the changes in their operation roles…thus allowing higher reliance on interstate exports during normal operating conditions.
Australia has generally been free of major tornado risks. Rare events.
Do we now ask that all HV transmission lines in SE Australia need to be tornado rated! Sooty Morrison has said we need to build resilience and adapt as a response to the changes in the climate. Who will foot the bill?
I consulted another ‘Sooty’.
I’m still waiting for an answer but expect it may make more sense.
I guess. 
