Electricity Price Increases

And looks like early or on time payments will be potentially reduced as well…

But from July 1 this practice of big penalties will no longer be allowed and late payment fees and pay on-time discount conditions will be limited to a retailer’s reasonable costs.

While late payment penalties restrictions will benefit those who pay late, it appears that the new limitations on early/on time payments will penalise those who do pay bills on time. I wonder where the greater benefit to most consumers lie?

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Taken as a whole, this probably benefits the retailers who can say ‘eliminating the on-time discount is not us, it is a government requirement.’

They probably gave out more ‘on time discounts’ in their plans, however they named it, than they charged late payers. Profits probably up, deals will be down or necessarily change in how they are presented, and the dogs breakfast of plan-confusion will simply change rather than go away or reduce.

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We (consumers) possibly have already paid for the ‘on time discounts’ through both slightly higher retailer charges and also from late payment penalties. Hopefully in a perfect world, with the changes in place, the retailer charges will reduce across the board (making bills sightly cheaper) while the late payment penalties will only reflect the actual costs incurred by the energy retailer for managing the late payment process.

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So… who’s keeping track and knows how much their bills have gone up? I am… and they havent, really. Maybe a little, taking into account the rebate I get on the pension, but overall… not really. My December quarter bill from 2015 (first rebate year) was more than the December quarter 2019. By $130.

It could be a trying experience to separate any changes to the business models/plans/advertising as compared to changes in the underlying cost of product (eg electricity) if bills get ‘slightly cheaper’.

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A total amount without context can be misleading. To understand the context what were your per kwh and daily service charges for each period?

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You might rightly assume that daily charge was more, as was the per kwh. Of course I can no longer prove that because I dont have copies of the bills. But I’m happy that my costs are less. Thats all I care about.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are some amazing technologies that will undoubtedly impact electricity prices - if politicians and vested interests don’t get in the way.


With that low-loss transmission, power generated anywhere in Australia could conceivably be used almost anywhere else in the nation.

The ANU found more than 1,000 times as much pumped hydro potential as we’d need for a 100% renewables grid, but here’s another option:

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For those who worry that “firming” of renewable electricity supplies will drastically increase retail prices, it seems the opposite might be true. Much of the short-term firming is carried out with batteries. Those batteries replace traditional technologies, such as gas turbines. The batteries have proven both cheaper and better at, not only firming, but other roles as well. The savings are significant (at least, at the wholesale level).

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It is worth taking a look back.

Over four years 2015 - 2019 I’ve created a standardised bill based on average consumption. I’ve ignored any solar credits or impacts to keep it simple. Brisbane urban supply point. Interesting comparison with our renewal offer included as an extra line.

The total has gone up approx 9% in 4 years. The daily supply charge has gone up 44% from $0.92 per day to $1.31. The second includes 7c per day for solar/remote metering. The actual cost of the power per kWh if anything has come down a little.

Who makes money out of the daily supply charges?

Note:
The Solar PV averages 15kWh daily. Output drops to approx 10kWh average in winter. Self consumption is low at under 3kWh daily.

AGL works out approx 10c per day cheaper, but has a higher usage charge. Line ball for the average 15-20kWh home.

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The owners of the poles and wires. That is the reason for ‘gold plating’. Which in turn is a major reason why privatisation was such an absurdity.

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In my little corner of Eltham I can attest we do not have ‘gold plating’ just some whitewash. Our supply is prone to regular overnight short outages (minutes) as well as longer daytime as well as night time ones (hours) when anything beyond a heavy mist moves through.

Instead of gold plating with a cut off the top most of that ‘daily supply’ money goes directly to shareholders and executives best I can tell.

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It does not explain why we have 247v for our street line voltage at 6:30am. We’re at the end of a line too!

Replacing one of the poles due to rot and termite attack with another wooden pole? No power for the best part of the day although the team of five vehicles and eight people might have needed a gold coin or two.

I dare say there are many things that are not explained by this process. Not all networks employed the tactic in all parts of their system. As well the way the rort was run allowed anomalies. Overall overspending does not necessarily filter down to improvements everywhere.

Let me explain somewhat. As part of the privatisation price control was imposed to stop the new private owners directly exploiting their monopoly by jacking up prices whenever they liked. One of the ways to get a price rise was to allow rates to be raised to repay capital expenditure on network enhancements. Network building is always a compromise between spare capacity and reliability on one hand and cost of infrastructure on the other. Gold plating is a tactic where overbuilding was employed to get a price rise.

In some cases this involved predictions of outrageous growth in demand that was never likely to happen. In this case the extra capacity would not actually provide any benefit for the users just allow a price rise to improve profits. These projects were chosen on the basis that they were likely to be profitable and to get approved, they were not necessarily the best place to spend money to improve reliability. So we had the anomaly where network charges were going up for all users while there were weak parts of the system not receiving attention.

On the overvoltage issue the official voltage in Oz has been 230V for some time but many parts of the net are still set at 240 (with allowances up to 253 I believe). I have no explanation for this. Maybe somebody who knows more can say.

You could ask your supplier, Mark, but 247V is acceptable under the Australian standard.

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Perhaps you are entitled to some rebates.

Perhaps inadvertently you do?

Having traced the line roughly back to the local network substation it is possibly a function of the system design and high local uptake of solar PV. Voltage regulation and capacity factors on the long local lines perhaps driving a fear of under voltage. “Soft” supply with poor voltage regulation in response to load changes.

Although the line voltage was the same high level four years ago before they mandated the change to 230v in Queensland. There is another possibly less technical excuse/explanation?

I have yet to tackle the supply authority more formally.

Reality is more urban supplies are relatively “stiff”, IE step changes in load have only minimal effects on voltage. They also have numerous distributed loads (eg shopping centres, offices, light industry) that also peak during the day when solar PV peaks. Perhaps due in part to gold plating. I don’t see the same problem in Urban Brisbane, although the early morning (low load conditions) voltage is typically still 242V.

It was intended as a rhetorical question, to suggest the gold plating had not achieved anything noticeable at our location.

Yes, I intend to.

An Aside:
The voltage rises quickly to well above 250V during the day. I’ve observed much higher than the 253V limit for extended periods. It’s probably still within tolerance at the substation feeder which will be monitored. Aside from limiting solar feedin there is a complex discussion around effective capacity of the transmission equipment vs increased losses at each consumer.

We have a >50% uptake of rooftop solar in our area.
@syncretic made a great observation about the capacity and system investments behind the gold plating. They may not have been applied universally. There have been recent calls from the owners of the network, poles and wires to spend even more to remedy the issues arising out of increased solar PV uptake and distributed renewables generation. Just what they intend would be of interest. Just to be sure they include remedying the issue with local regulation to ensure solar PV owners etc can maximise any feedin opportunities.

It all translates to more costs on the consumer for electricity at some stage. One might suspect delivering a solution at Govt level will be deferred.

Edit added
As per @gordon previously noted in 2016.

An article regarding a large wind, solar and battery project in N W Qld still waiting to be connected to the grid.

Whoever said “build it and they will come” was not including power transmission.

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A horror story of a Sydney woman receiving a $1,023 electricity bill for one month due to a portable air conditioner.

https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/coronavirus-electricity-costs-working-from-home-and-school/e80b1329-7239-43dc-8178-2c100304e468

What an inefficient piece of junk.

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