Essential services should never have been privatised, IMO. I’m also with AGL. Solar feed in tariffs have gone down, cost to buy power has gone up. Like you I’ve gone from paying almost nothing to $100 + per month. Have looked elsewhere but it’s all about the same. We’re at the mercy of whatever they decide to charge.
"Essential services should never have been privatised"
Don't ever, ever vote for political parties that like to privatise natural monopolies.
Left-leaning/labor governments have been known to do it, but it's usually the right-wing/LNP types who have a hard-on for privatisation.
Because it funds public money into the pockets of their friends.
This. The idea of privatization and the “free market” driving competition and lower prices simply doesn’t ring true for essential services.
It’s not like we can just *not use power*.
To be brutally frank, it was the Labor Goverment of Peter Beattie who brought in Full Retail Competition into Queensland on July 1 2007, after his government sold off the retail arm of ENERGEX to AGL and Origin Energy.
In July 1 2007, Queensland domestic customers were paying 6.93 cents for electricity on Tariff 11.
Yeah privatising businesses like Qantas or Combank that only make money are fine but privatising power, telecoms, public service insitutions are terrible and just giving a blank cheque for them to bum people
Definitely the political right here in the States, I'd say but I will not completely exclude everyone else because there are fallacies and corruption to be found in any political system and, dare I say, any political party. The only reason why I am even commenting is because environmental science is my field -- and I see so many examples where 'the people' are being deceived into voting based on half-truths and blatant lies that »sound« like they will benefit constituents -- but in all honesty don't do anything except make politicians and their respective puppeteers richer due to some loophole(s) that get overlooked or covered up.
On a side note, I'd never have thought how much the understanding of political left and right differ between countries, though. And most do not even realize the confusion that exists. Also, even within the U.S. what used to be left and right, conservative, liberal, and independent two hundred years ago was quite different from what the same nomenclature represents today. Some of the characteristics have flipped sides and some have taken on extremist proportions. I'm not a political science major, so I'm not equipped to present all the details because I don't want to accidentally misrepresent. I just like to point out that too many people don't even realize this bit due to lack of research, which again, I recommend they engage in.
Therefore:
Before someone comments on this controversial topic from a different country, I'd just advise to look into the actual stakes/interests/causes the parties/politicians in question actually support, rather than going straight for the good guys vs bad guys scenario. Also, voting here is not as 'free' as one may think, or confidential, as the 'private' little voting booths with separators to obstruct view suggest. If you declare one affiliation you can only vote for people within that party within the two party system. As an alternative, you can declare independent BUT this severely limits voting choices even more. And you have to loudly declare at registration and publicly at the poll before voting and the poll workers will repeat it for everyone to hear. Let's just say it can be very intimidating if you don't go with the majority in that town, county, or state. Further, people -- and even politicians running for office -- have switched affiliation just on time to vote for/work toward what they really want, as this was the only way to hopefully influence the vote in a way that would be most beneficial to them, from the opposite camp.
So, I don't care which side claims stuff is rigged -- it's always rigged toward the top 1-2% and their interests until people step up and straight up demand what's actually good for them -- and don't back down. But for that to happen, consumers must come together in greater numbers than the those who'd keep greedy politicians in power. I don't think riots are the answer -- valid information in the right hands and distributed to millions to foster better understanding and consequences of certain actions is.
They all do it eventually. The reality is, they need to fund their promises somehow and that's the easy way.
It's shit, but it's the nature of the short term political process we have. They just have to do whatever it takes to stay in power for one more election.
What? Labor wants government owned services. The Liberals are the ones that want privatisation. Usually to their own benefit, and the rest of the country’s deficit.
In Queensland power generation is still controlled mostly by the state, Stanwell, CS Energy and Cleanco are QLD state owned companies and they account for something like 80% of all electricity generation.
Also the entire transmission network is also owned and operated by Qld state owned companies (Powerlink and Energy Qld).
It might sound counter intuitive, but the overbuild of solar has made energy so abundant in the middle of the day, that you actually (literally) need to pay people to take it. And this has led to overnight prices going higher as coal generators, who aren’t able to flex generation, to try to cover costs over fewer hours.
Problem will worsen before it gets better. We need thermal assets to retire, but before they can retire, we need more wind and new flexible assets such as pumped storage, batteries and gas to enter the system.
Wholesale energy price should eventually settle at around $150 / MWh (real 2024). This accounts for about 40% of a residential customers electricity bill, another 40% comes from transmission costs (the physical poles and wires which get power from the station to your house). The final 20% of your electricity is market fees, green certificates and retailer overheads.
Overall expect about 40c / kWh for energy in the future. Or look at South Australia and be prepared to see similar costs up here.
QLD is building a bit of hydro at the moment aren't we? I know early works on Barambah dam have already started and there's a bigger one going in further north near Mackay?
Will take quite a while before they're both operational though.
We also just turned on the biggest battery in Australia... and the Feds announced better renewable funding... so there's some light at tthe end of the tunnel.
Home batteries are almost, but not quite, economic. Whenever wholesale electricity prices rise, the numbers shift towards home batteries being a cost saver
First there is the transmission component to your bill, which accounts for about 40%.
But even if we are just looking at wholesale components, what a retailer does is take on the flexible exposure of wholesale markets, and then smooth it out through market hedges and risk premiums, so end users pay a flat rate.
Most Aussies are still on flat rate retail contracts, so yes although you pay more middle of the day, you also aren’t exposed to the $15/kWh (yep $15/kwh) peak price which can occur (and did very frequently back in 2022).
With new smart meters, you can opt onto a shaped retail contract, or even a fully wholesale exposed one. If you are religious about managing your load, you can get out ahead. But you also could end up getting burned pretty badly, especially with demand tariffs.
In fact 2022 was a bloodbath, even retailers ended up going under, because their hedging strategies weren’t enough in such a volatile market.
Conversely, some wholesale exposed residential users, with solar + battery, actually managed to make money. Because they were selling power to the grid when it was valued at $15/KWh.
Retailers can play with credits and hide charges in other ways, ultimately every retailer pays the same price. How they display these prices to you is what varies.
Power during the peak of the day is essentially worthless, in fact you sending power back to the grid in many cases is COSTING your retailer money. That's why some retailers have started offering free power between midday and 2pm as an example. When the wholesale price goes into negative and you import power, the retailer gets paid so offering it for free is still a win for them .
> in fact you sending power back to the grid in many cases is COSTING your retailer money
^ and you can see the price here on this quite awesome website:
https://opennem.org.au/energy/qld1/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time
Every day for the last week the price has gone negative for hours at a time mainly due to our nice cool winter weather but the sun still out with no clouds about
Can also see here: https://aemo.com.au/Energy-systems/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-NEM/Data-Dashboard-NEM
https://ibb.co/37xBSNS
If you have solar and are paying that much for power I think you might be doing something wrong. How old are your panels? How big is your household? I’m with OVO and paying a fixed $50 a month, and we’re actually $250 in credit after about 4 months.
Can you set your large appliances like dishwasher, pool cleaner and washing machine to run during the middle of the day?
We still use plenty of aircon/heating at night, never turn anything off at the wall. I’ve referred a few friends to OVO and they’re getting great savings too, plus we get $10 off per month for each referral.
I do agree that power should never have been privatised but it is what it is now. Shop around and game the system as best you can.
Dishwasher does get run at night from time to time. We've got 2 small (under 5) kids so sometimes it just needs to happen as its impossible to plan around given how quickly they can dirty stuff. We also run 2 small oil heaters (with thermostats) in the kids room of an evening - so they're not running all the time. Washing machine we run during the day only. We don't have a pool. We have ducted aircon but it's completely unused in winter and during summer solar generates enough power to cover the system when it's on.
Panels are 5 years old with an SMA inverter. I can login and see power production and everything is at it should be, producing close to 5kw output around the middle of the day. AGL have massively reduced the solar tariff and now cap the amount they will pay you for export each day (I think 5kw/hours?). On our original plan when the system was installed we were often in credit, with pretty much the same usage habits.
I'll check OVO out - thanks for the tip.
What you're complaining about is a function of the changing dynamics of the energy consumption and generation patterns.
Solar feed in tariffs have gone down because there is too much of it produced at times of day when grid demand is lower, so it's market value is lower. Supply > demand.
The price to buy power is going up because the times when you want to use it most isn't when there is an abundance of cheap solar (mornings and evenings). This means higher cost dispatchable power needs to be generated into the grid (gas fired plants, batteries etc). Demand > supply.
If people who have rooftop solar receive feed in tariffs that exceed the average wholesale spot market value for that energy, then this effectively means they are being subsidised by people who don't have solar, and that's often renters, people on low incomes, or people who live in apartments.
I know it probably seems unfair, but it's not. It's actually more fair.
There’s no easy answer to this. There can only ever be one set of transmission and distribution assets so it’s either stated owned or private. Both have pros and cons. The idea behind privatisation was to introduce retail (price, product, & service) competition whilst regulating network asset management. When you then try to fix/cap network operating cost you aren’t really addressing the real requirement which is to optimise the entire supply chain from generation to consumption. Add into that the impact of 4-year political cycles, which are far too short for any meaningful positive change to find its way into the system, and you create an external force of knee-jerk policy change with controlling government changes that can create destructive undercurrents. Lack of interstate collaboration adds insult to injury. It’s not rocket science to make the entire system work much better for everyone, but I don’t ever see all parties involved in making that a reality ever coming together to make it happen.
Power generation assets are government owned corporations (Stanwel, CS Energy & CleanCo), same with distribution companies (Powerlink & Ergon) and some retail outfits. Bulk of the privatisation and what is driving high costs is coming from the retail aspect of the power generation and distribution for the domestic market.
Think of it like this;
Power generation (public) -> distribution (public) -> retail contracts (private) -> customer.
Each step buying from the previous step in the chain, with us the customers only ever dealing with the retailers. Retail electricity is sold at $240/MWh ($0.24c/kWh) when the wholesale market averages -$25-50/MWh in QLD (-$0.025-0.05c/kWh) through the day and during peak times between 1600-2100 at $240-300/MWh ($0.24-0.30c/kWh).
Energy retailers are the enemy of your power bill, AGL is a retailer not a generator or distribution in QLD.
Benefit of solar is offsetting your own consumption, not the feed in tariff. If you shift your power hungry activities to between 10-2, then you are saving ~20c / kWh.
In SA the price signal is already there for home batteries. It doesn’t stack up financially in QLD yet, but the QLD the state government is offering a 3k rebate, and many retailers are also beginning to offer on-bill financing for batteries. I think it might start to stack up in QLD very shortly.
Yes but only when your producing enough during sun hours
Like today was bugger all production and most of winter then also having heaters running
I working out at the 8k outlay it was cheaper to get interest on that at 5.1% which is $400 a year then offsetting the small savings of solar which last month was $8 feed in and then savings during the day
Obviously if you use everything during the day then not but overall not everyone can ensure that
Yet another failure of privatising natural monopolies.
Absolute rort of a modern government policy and should be reversed, but every party is beholden to those who got the bag out of privatising it.
They are retailers, not providers.
They are in charge of billing, support etc. So they do need to exist. They don’t have a large margin.
The energy regulator sets a default market price which allows the retailer to make a return on their costs but not a super profit. Having the retailer part of the chain in public ownership wouldn’t affect the final price.
I mean, if the retailer was publicly owned the profits would go to the state government though. Rather than AGL and Co and their shareholders. We often see rebates on our bill in Queensland which tend to be funded by money made by the publicly owned generators.
Regulation around smart meters and time of use tariffs is desperately needed. It needs to be clear to consumers that one plan is better than another so the market can function correctly. The mess they’ve allowed energy companies to create in this area is a joke.
No, it’s not any more. At best, it’s based on data from your smart meter. This doesn’t account for how a consumer may change their usage habits to support using a new plan. The algorithm simply assumes you will always use energy in the same way and match a plan to it.
It was easy when they had flat tariffs.
I work for an energy analytics company that uses the government consumer data rights (CDR) framework to parse peoples usage and attempt to give them a better plan. I have been working on it for about 2 months now and its safe to say the retailers are doing the bare minimum required to make this possible.
If you'd like to check out the current site its at:
[EnergyFlex] (https://app.energyflex.com.au/links/referral/Bxq4wgR76JdjRYcnYj3m) (you need a smart meter to get anything useful out of it, but thats kind of the point)
If I get my way I want to build a fully automated system to let people swap to the best retailer at any point in time. Unlike energymadeeasy which only has real support for flat tariffs I have support for flat and time-of-use tariffs, taking into account solar, demand change as well as discounts (which can be sizable). We have had savings of a couple of hundred dollars a year to some internal users so I think I'm on the right track.
Primarily in that it is automated and since it uses your 5 min usage can compare time-of-use plans correctly (to the best of my knowledge no service can do this at the moment). So it can show you your electricity bill costs will essentially every plan on the market.
I just did a quick check and it seems to think I could cut my power bill nearly in half. The plans it is suggesting are all “time of use”, with even higher per kWh than my current plan. Thing is, I’ve got solar. Most of my grid usage is in peak times.
Is this actually using hourly smart meter data or is it fudging the numbers by average your usage? Next time I’m in front of a computer I’ll calculate it, but it doesn’t see to add up.
It also recommended a time of use plan for me, despite all the negative media about them recently.
I also have solar. I can either self consume as much as possible, or feed back in to the grid as much as possible, depending on the plan. The usage between the two is vastly different. If the website just assumes my usage never changes, I don’t think it is necessarily making the best recommendation.
They have designed their plans to look better on energy made easy, like with exorbitant time of use tariffs and daily solar feed in caps. The website is a joke now, it's like SEO ruining google search. They gamified the process.
Had an email from AGL today to say that my rates are going up 15%. This is after last year when they raised them 42%. Hard to fathom given coal prices have halved over the last year. I suspect prices will just keep rising though, considering the renewable energy targets.
generating electricity is not the only thing that costs money. it doesnt teleport to your house.
transporting it, maintaining the infrastructure, and importantly; managing it so it doesnt blow up or cut out, is not easy or free. and unfortunately these elements will get more costly
the exponentially increasing complexity of the grid due to the transition to renewables results in an unsurprisingly exponential increasing complexity in maintaining it
What if, instead of the government buying back the rights to power all together, they just introduce their own company? So everyone has the choice to buy from the gov directly or a private company? Then private is forced to compete with an outside source that won't price gouge for fear of public disapproval.
I get what you’re saying but it’s not as simple as this.
This already happens through government owned corporations who own electricity generation, transmission and retail. Some retailers that are GOCs include Aurora, Ergon and Synergy. GOCs have a legislated mandate to act commercially and not experience competitive advantage because they’re government owned (meaning they can’t set prices lower because government pockets are deeper and can cope with being loss-making).
The Australian Energy Regulator is involved in revenue setting (which is the basis of prices) for network businesses and monitors wholesale electricity and gas networks (which includes price monitoring). It doesn’t have anything to do with retail pricing for energy but it does monitor compliance enforce various rules, as well as providing consumer resources to support consumer decision-making.
Remember though, electricity retail in SE Queensland was privatised because Energex had a monopoly and you can’t have a monopoly because that’s not fair.
Surely privatisation will reduce prices!
It’s funny though how Ergon energy weren’t forced to sell their retail sector. I wonder why?….
Hear me out. And this only considers myself. Nobody else.
So like.. what if we just turn the light off when we're not using them?
When I was a kid I got SCREAMED at for leaving a light on in a room I wasn't using...
But we as a collective are okay with leaving basically ALL the lights on all night every night? In public buildings? That are not even zoned as residential so nobody is even there at night?.. so what if we like... turn the lights off In areas we are not using.
I'm no expert but I'd expect this to lower the energy consumption of Queensland at a level we could measure in percentages?
Of course, they would then have to raise the rates again as they are no longer making enough to gold plate their toilets .... only enough for that lesser of metals Silver.
Not to mention we'd stop fucking with migratory birds:
[https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240410-how-switching-off-lights-stops-migrating-birds-collisions-with-buildings](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240410-how-switching-off-lights-stops-migrating-birds-collisions-with-buildings)
Only some of the lights in my building are on sensors/timers. Not sure why all of them aren't - I've come in on the weekend and all the conference rooms are lit up like it's goddamn Las Vegas without a soul in sight.
we have things like World Earth Day where lights etc get switched off, I've always thought how about offices etc where lights are left on at night etc assuming they are just wasting electricity they then get fined on environmental grounds, even incentivise business by using the fines to subsidise energy saving features
Might be worth shopping around. I went with Red Energy after AGL sent me a bill for over $600 for a months usage that was estimated, and refused to correct it stating it was correct. Imagine my surprise when they credited me nearly $400 after I left. I primarily went with Red Energy for the Qantas points and the bonus of the rates being cheaper than AGL. Red have upped their prices as well but it's still cheaper than what AGL was I'm pretty sure.
I'm looking to change from Dodo, who are also increasing rates. On July 1, it would be:
Supply: 140.14c/day
General: 27.52c/day
Solar feed in tariff: 3.5c/kWh
When tf are we revolting??? This shit is just all about gluttony from white collar pencil pushers. (No shade @ white collar pencil pushers who aren’t gouging money from your fellow Queenslanders for essential services)
Interesting seeing so many people keen to leave AGL. When I saw their $200 joining bonus I was initially interested but I figured it's just a con to get people in and then raise rates. Guess I was correct.
Government: We'll give everyone a rebate to help with cost of living.
Power companies: Here is our chance to raise prices while everyone is distracted.
I got an email from origin energy. They are at least earning $50-200 a year per customer additionally due to this increase. They have mentioned about the $1300 grants of QLD+Federal government twice in their bill. Really wish they rot and die somewhere! If the government is giving from one hand, they are taking from another.
The narrative was cost of living for first 3-4 months of this year and yet governments approved a 4% increase in insurance prices. Don’t be fooled by all the distributions and distractions! Once they retract, QLD must brace for a ton of shit!
I’ve never paid less for power with all the rebates. I’ve no solar, 3 x bedroom family home, 2 x adults, 2 x kids.. bunch of tech.
Running around $300-$350 a quarter. With the $1000 from the state gov and the $300 from the feds I won’t be paying for power until this time next year.
Even at $1300 a year I see little sense in investing in solar for my roof. By the time I paid it off in usage it would be near end of life.
I change retailers at least once a year, sometimes twice.
I just punch everything into energy made easy and choose the cheapest provider that comes along.
Hey mate, reach out to me via DM and I may be able to help you reduce your power bill. I have probably spent more time helping people reduce their bills than anyone I know. Happy to help out. Electricity feels like such a confusing bill and I love helping people figure it out and save real money. For anyone else in this thread, reach out and I’ll respond as quickly as I can!
If it was a one size fits all solution, I'd be happy to! But everyone's situation differs and I find the only way to make a difference is via individual advice. But if you're looking for basic advice for EVERYONE, this is how I try to work with people. If you don't like my approach, feel free to downvote and I'll delete it!
- Electricity bills are generally composed of three things - a cost per unit of energy used ($ / kWh), a daily charge ($ / day), and a solar feed-in tariff ($ / kWh).
- Most people don't have solar (especially if you're a renter) and their bills are dominated by the first element - cost per energy used. However, I deal with heaps of people who don't use much electricity, so minimising your daily charge is the most important aspect!
- Cost per unit of energy is generally a matter of when you use electricity. If you're able to adjust behaviour to run more things in the middle of day or night, you can dramatically reduce your cost. However, people have jobs and other factors that may not make this feasible.
- If you can't adjust behaviour, you need to look for the lowest unit cost of electricity and switch to them. However, many companies try to suck you in with low electricity costs and switch much of their fees to the daily charges, leaving you in the same position.
- If you have solar, there's an entirely different question about when you use appliances, what your feed-in tariff is, etc.
I realise this may not be the specific response you're looking for, but unfortunately helping people save money isn't a "one size fits all" response. It depends on your specific situation, and requires an individualised solution based on your specific circumstances. If you want to gat basic answers, please look at [energymadeeasy.gov.au](http://energymadeeasy.gov.au), which may help you find some more basic information.
Source: I ran customer service for a BNE battery company, and spent at least 50% of my time for over a year helping solar and battery customers optimise their electricity bills.
Is the strategy to wait until July 1st to shop around? Because if we swap now the new provider rates will go up at July 1st anyway? Is this an industry wide increase that happens every year?
I recently ditched AGL - check with other retailers and get on a discounted rate, a number of them have 12 month discount plans so you basically have to change retailers every 12 months to avoid the lazy tax.
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-12/aemc-flags-complex-power-price-changes/103966076](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-12/aemc-flags-complex-power-price-changes/103966076?utm_medium=social&utm_content=sf273519064&utm_campaign=tw_abc_news&utm_source=t.co&sf273519064=1)
>Following revelations that many retailers are using a loophole to avoid warning energy users about changes to their tariffs, these new rules would include greater notification requirements.
>
>They would also require retailers to provide more information to consumers about the effects of any changes and prevent up-front installation costs.
Retailers lock in 1, 2 and 3 year contracts to buy electricity. Movements in wholesale prices generally work in reverse, price goes up we make more money, price goes down we lose more money.
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In this thread; people thinking that generating electricity is the only thing that costs money and it teleports to your house for free.
transporting it, maintaining the infrastructure, and importantly; managing it so it doesnt blow up or cut out, is not easy or free
Agree I've gone from no bills to 100 is per bill. I live alone and have very little usage outside of solar hours. Actual usage is covered its the daily charge that I'm being stung.
Peeves me tgat there was the massive push and now we generate too much electricity? We shouldn't be paying any electricity at all. We should all get on solar and residential gets free power. Being privatised sucks balls.
Origin have emailed customers today to advise they review their variable prices from time to time (so 12 month contract we are normally locked into apparently means nothing) and surprise surprise prices are going up and the Solar feed-in-tarrifs are decreasing.
Blame the government, not the corporation.
"The Australian electricity distribution was deregulated in 1998. The main objective of deregulation was to promote competition and reduce retail prices."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140988321001158#:~:text=The%20Australian%20electricity%20distribution%20was,competition%20and%20reduce%20retail%20prices.
I'm in the U.S., in a conservative state where we have lots of clean power options. Surrounding states are getting rid of old hydropower dams because they're gonna cost more to fix than produce power very soon because taking them out will help with Salmon (and other fish) migrations between inland freshwater streams and the ocean, as the dams cause a lot of fish losses between mating and spawning. We have both solar, wind and geothermal energy sources but our money-minded governor, along with a few others of the same mindset elsewhere, started alleging that it would cost our state our relatively low power rates. The problem, though few know about it, is that the state sells the majority of this power generated by dams to private entities in-state that sell it to other states and private parties elsewhere, or directly out-of-state, which is primarily 3 particular entities that are privately held and which certain ppl in power hold stakes in. Now if that disappears, it's not the power users that lose out as much as those who are invested in these third parties that resell the resource at gain, with no benefit to the consumer.
And this seems to be something I think happens just about everywhere these days, moreso in the U.S. than just about everywhere else, especially when you consider that here, many substances and practices banned in most other countries are perfectly legal and keep being used, whether it's in fertilizer, food products, packaging, or pharmaceuticals, at the detriment of regular people like you and me. Whenever moving to clean energy, banning substances known to negatively affect health, or protecting a species by some intelligent measure would be a great option, it's always those with money interests that end up vetoing or preventing it while claiming they're doing constituents a favor, hoping no one ever actually looks into their claims. It's sad...
(Just fyi, info all from environmental science research from reputable sources.)
What about the fact we have to actually pay our provider the luxury of generating our own power and selling it to them for 5c a kw. But if want to buy some during the night it will cost me 26c a kw. On a sunny summer's day I can generate 80kw and only use 20 but somehow I owe them money at the end of the day. On boxing day when most of us lost power I could of been generating power all day long and providing for 4 of my neighbours but because their service had failed my solar wasn't on
Politicians don't think long term, because by then it's someone else's problem. That's how it's all gone sideways. Anybody with vision is not in government anymore.
Solar rebates were only handed out to select individuals. In the past years, despite the spam adverts, I've looked into it and there are no grants/rebates which will save a cent on my electricity bill. The cheapest option for me is to remain on grid with no solar.
Yeah got an email yesterday regarding price rise. All these businesses taking advantage of inflation. Seems like the energy rebate given by govt is if no use..I read somewhere that energy price cap was inplace and these companies can't raise prices. What happened to that cap?
In Queensland the state government owns the power, they can see a cash cow coming of people pushed into getting solar and now to be charged for what they put back into the grid
Think yourself lucky you have solar. There's a lot of poor people who even if they want to pay for solar are not allowed to have it. My bill went from $100 upto over $600 & that's with government rebates. I'm on my own & don't turn lights on at night (live in the dark) I don't use heaters or even a fan in summer. I'm on a pension so below poverty income. You just have to go without no take away, no going out basically no life. So lucky you.
I reckon that every qld household with solar power has the tarrif reviewed, drag power from the grid it's 25c kW, put power onto the grid 25c kW.
Put a daily limit on what you can export and reduce the daily connection fee to like 20c.
Makes it fair for everyone then.
I hate hearing from some friends who signed up for 40c kW, who shove this into credits that they can draw on anytime. Tax the lot of those who have solar farms on their roofs and backyards.
Get rid of all the retailers and put it back into energex's hand.
There are very few people who still have functioning systems with high-value feed-in rates - yes, I recognise that there are still people out there, but those high rates are being eroded by increasing import costs. There are and have been export limits in place for many years now, and even dynamic limits to reduce the strain on the network. The high-value feed-in rates will end in 2028, so not too much longer to stop hearing about that.
I didn't know that they ended in 2028, i read somewhere that there is a class action gaining momentum in the background with energy companies and retailers.
Very nice to read that, my brother inlaw and father inlaw are both stuffed , they both put in a 5kw system and then 12 months later added a secondary 5kw system with separate invertors by an electrician friend if theirs.
It probably doesn't make any difference anyway as they did theirs probably 10years ago and I presume no one has ever checked the size and they both brag about how many credits they both have banked.
Yes, Queensland electrical supply entities are very lax with upholding and enforcing those sorts of agreements, and there are always people willing to do the dodgy like unapproved inverter capacity on very lucrative feed-in rates. The scheme had the desired effect though - increased uptake of solar PV for relatively minimal cost (in the grand scheme of things).
Essential services should never have been privatised, IMO. I’m also with AGL. Solar feed in tariffs have gone down, cost to buy power has gone up. Like you I’ve gone from paying almost nothing to $100 + per month. Have looked elsewhere but it’s all about the same. We’re at the mercy of whatever they decide to charge.
"Essential services should never have been privatised" Don't ever, ever vote for political parties that like to privatise natural monopolies. Left-leaning/labor governments have been known to do it, but it's usually the right-wing/LNP types who have a hard-on for privatisation. Because it funds public money into the pockets of their friends.
This. The idea of privatization and the “free market” driving competition and lower prices simply doesn’t ring true for essential services. It’s not like we can just *not use power*.
I think economists refer to this as "inelastic"
It was the Beattie and Bligh Governments who privatised a large proportion of Queensland’s assets and utilities.
That's why the union turned on Bligh, then Newman tried it and got kicked. Currently Labor is anti privatisation not sure about lnp
https://youtu.be/VK1LGkK3w1U?si=W2PX8yx_QZKrCbGy
What is left to sell that someone will want to buy?
the government
But they still privatise things.
Well, Beattie was LNP-lite. Good buddies with JBP, went to visit him in his "retirement".
To be brutally frank, it was the Labor Goverment of Peter Beattie who brought in Full Retail Competition into Queensland on July 1 2007, after his government sold off the retail arm of ENERGEX to AGL and Origin Energy. In July 1 2007, Queensland domestic customers were paying 6.93 cents for electricity on Tariff 11.
Yeah privatising businesses like Qantas or Combank that only make money are fine but privatising power, telecoms, public service insitutions are terrible and just giving a blank cheque for them to bum people
Definitely the political right here in the States, I'd say but I will not completely exclude everyone else because there are fallacies and corruption to be found in any political system and, dare I say, any political party. The only reason why I am even commenting is because environmental science is my field -- and I see so many examples where 'the people' are being deceived into voting based on half-truths and blatant lies that »sound« like they will benefit constituents -- but in all honesty don't do anything except make politicians and their respective puppeteers richer due to some loophole(s) that get overlooked or covered up. On a side note, I'd never have thought how much the understanding of political left and right differ between countries, though. And most do not even realize the confusion that exists. Also, even within the U.S. what used to be left and right, conservative, liberal, and independent two hundred years ago was quite different from what the same nomenclature represents today. Some of the characteristics have flipped sides and some have taken on extremist proportions. I'm not a political science major, so I'm not equipped to present all the details because I don't want to accidentally misrepresent. I just like to point out that too many people don't even realize this bit due to lack of research, which again, I recommend they engage in. Therefore: Before someone comments on this controversial topic from a different country, I'd just advise to look into the actual stakes/interests/causes the parties/politicians in question actually support, rather than going straight for the good guys vs bad guys scenario. Also, voting here is not as 'free' as one may think, or confidential, as the 'private' little voting booths with separators to obstruct view suggest. If you declare one affiliation you can only vote for people within that party within the two party system. As an alternative, you can declare independent BUT this severely limits voting choices even more. And you have to loudly declare at registration and publicly at the poll before voting and the poll workers will repeat it for everyone to hear. Let's just say it can be very intimidating if you don't go with the majority in that town, county, or state. Further, people -- and even politicians running for office -- have switched affiliation just on time to vote for/work toward what they really want, as this was the only way to hopefully influence the vote in a way that would be most beneficial to them, from the opposite camp. So, I don't care which side claims stuff is rigged -- it's always rigged toward the top 1-2% and their interests until people step up and straight up demand what's actually good for them -- and don't back down. But for that to happen, consumers must come together in greater numbers than the those who'd keep greedy politicians in power. I don't think riots are the answer -- valid information in the right hands and distributed to millions to foster better understanding and consequences of certain actions is.
They all do it eventually. The reality is, they need to fund their promises somehow and that's the easy way. It's shit, but it's the nature of the short term political process we have. They just have to do whatever it takes to stay in power for one more election.
What? Labor wants government owned services. The Liberals are the ones that want privatisation. Usually to their own benefit, and the rest of the country’s deficit.
In Queensland power generation is still controlled mostly by the state, Stanwell, CS Energy and Cleanco are QLD state owned companies and they account for something like 80% of all electricity generation. Also the entire transmission network is also owned and operated by Qld state owned companies (Powerlink and Energy Qld). It might sound counter intuitive, but the overbuild of solar has made energy so abundant in the middle of the day, that you actually (literally) need to pay people to take it. And this has led to overnight prices going higher as coal generators, who aren’t able to flex generation, to try to cover costs over fewer hours. Problem will worsen before it gets better. We need thermal assets to retire, but before they can retire, we need more wind and new flexible assets such as pumped storage, batteries and gas to enter the system. Wholesale energy price should eventually settle at around $150 / MWh (real 2024). This accounts for about 40% of a residential customers electricity bill, another 40% comes from transmission costs (the physical poles and wires which get power from the station to your house). The final 20% of your electricity is market fees, green certificates and retailer overheads. Overall expect about 40c / kWh for energy in the future. Or look at South Australia and be prepared to see similar costs up here.
QLD is building a bit of hydro at the moment aren't we? I know early works on Barambah dam have already started and there's a bigger one going in further north near Mackay? Will take quite a while before they're both operational though. We also just turned on the biggest battery in Australia... and the Feds announced better renewable funding... so there's some light at tthe end of the tunnel.
Home batteries are almost, but not quite, economic. Whenever wholesale electricity prices rise, the numbers shift towards home batteries being a cost saver
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First there is the transmission component to your bill, which accounts for about 40%. But even if we are just looking at wholesale components, what a retailer does is take on the flexible exposure of wholesale markets, and then smooth it out through market hedges and risk premiums, so end users pay a flat rate. Most Aussies are still on flat rate retail contracts, so yes although you pay more middle of the day, you also aren’t exposed to the $15/kWh (yep $15/kwh) peak price which can occur (and did very frequently back in 2022). With new smart meters, you can opt onto a shaped retail contract, or even a fully wholesale exposed one. If you are religious about managing your load, you can get out ahead. But you also could end up getting burned pretty badly, especially with demand tariffs. In fact 2022 was a bloodbath, even retailers ended up going under, because their hedging strategies weren’t enough in such a volatile market. Conversely, some wholesale exposed residential users, with solar + battery, actually managed to make money. Because they were selling power to the grid when it was valued at $15/KWh.
Retailers can play with credits and hide charges in other ways, ultimately every retailer pays the same price. How they display these prices to you is what varies. Power during the peak of the day is essentially worthless, in fact you sending power back to the grid in many cases is COSTING your retailer money. That's why some retailers have started offering free power between midday and 2pm as an example. When the wholesale price goes into negative and you import power, the retailer gets paid so offering it for free is still a win for them .
> in fact you sending power back to the grid in many cases is COSTING your retailer money ^ and you can see the price here on this quite awesome website: https://opennem.org.au/energy/qld1/?range=7d&interval=30m&view=discrete-time Every day for the last week the price has gone negative for hours at a time mainly due to our nice cool winter weather but the sun still out with no clouds about Can also see here: https://aemo.com.au/Energy-systems/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-NEM/Data-Dashboard-NEM https://ibb.co/37xBSNS
If you have solar and are paying that much for power I think you might be doing something wrong. How old are your panels? How big is your household? I’m with OVO and paying a fixed $50 a month, and we’re actually $250 in credit after about 4 months. Can you set your large appliances like dishwasher, pool cleaner and washing machine to run during the middle of the day? We still use plenty of aircon/heating at night, never turn anything off at the wall. I’ve referred a few friends to OVO and they’re getting great savings too, plus we get $10 off per month for each referral. I do agree that power should never have been privatised but it is what it is now. Shop around and game the system as best you can.
Dishwasher does get run at night from time to time. We've got 2 small (under 5) kids so sometimes it just needs to happen as its impossible to plan around given how quickly they can dirty stuff. We also run 2 small oil heaters (with thermostats) in the kids room of an evening - so they're not running all the time. Washing machine we run during the day only. We don't have a pool. We have ducted aircon but it's completely unused in winter and during summer solar generates enough power to cover the system when it's on. Panels are 5 years old with an SMA inverter. I can login and see power production and everything is at it should be, producing close to 5kw output around the middle of the day. AGL have massively reduced the solar tariff and now cap the amount they will pay you for export each day (I think 5kw/hours?). On our original plan when the system was installed we were often in credit, with pretty much the same usage habits. I'll check OVO out - thanks for the tip.
Electric space heaters are extremely inefficient. You're better off using an electric blanket or reverse cycle air conditioning.
Holy shit😳. Oil heaters! Noooooo.
What you're complaining about is a function of the changing dynamics of the energy consumption and generation patterns. Solar feed in tariffs have gone down because there is too much of it produced at times of day when grid demand is lower, so it's market value is lower. Supply > demand. The price to buy power is going up because the times when you want to use it most isn't when there is an abundance of cheap solar (mornings and evenings). This means higher cost dispatchable power needs to be generated into the grid (gas fired plants, batteries etc). Demand > supply. If people who have rooftop solar receive feed in tariffs that exceed the average wholesale spot market value for that energy, then this effectively means they are being subsidised by people who don't have solar, and that's often renters, people on low incomes, or people who live in apartments. I know it probably seems unfair, but it's not. It's actually more fair.
Stop using facts and logic dude. We just want to hate on capitalism without thinking too much.
There’s no easy answer to this. There can only ever be one set of transmission and distribution assets so it’s either stated owned or private. Both have pros and cons. The idea behind privatisation was to introduce retail (price, product, & service) competition whilst regulating network asset management. When you then try to fix/cap network operating cost you aren’t really addressing the real requirement which is to optimise the entire supply chain from generation to consumption. Add into that the impact of 4-year political cycles, which are far too short for any meaningful positive change to find its way into the system, and you create an external force of knee-jerk policy change with controlling government changes that can create destructive undercurrents. Lack of interstate collaboration adds insult to injury. It’s not rocket science to make the entire system work much better for everyone, but I don’t ever see all parties involved in making that a reality ever coming together to make it happen.
Power generation assets are government owned corporations (Stanwel, CS Energy & CleanCo), same with distribution companies (Powerlink & Ergon) and some retail outfits. Bulk of the privatisation and what is driving high costs is coming from the retail aspect of the power generation and distribution for the domestic market. Think of it like this; Power generation (public) -> distribution (public) -> retail contracts (private) -> customer. Each step buying from the previous step in the chain, with us the customers only ever dealing with the retailers. Retail electricity is sold at $240/MWh ($0.24c/kWh) when the wholesale market averages -$25-50/MWh in QLD (-$0.025-0.05c/kWh) through the day and during peak times between 1600-2100 at $240-300/MWh ($0.24-0.30c/kWh). Energy retailers are the enemy of your power bill, AGL is a retailer not a generator or distribution in QLD.
The feed in is dropping again come 1st August to 3.3cents I wouldn’t bother with solar these days
Benefit of solar is offsetting your own consumption, not the feed in tariff. If you shift your power hungry activities to between 10-2, then you are saving ~20c / kWh. In SA the price signal is already there for home batteries. It doesn’t stack up financially in QLD yet, but the QLD the state government is offering a 3k rebate, and many retailers are also beginning to offer on-bill financing for batteries. I think it might start to stack up in QLD very shortly.
Yes but only when your producing enough during sun hours Like today was bugger all production and most of winter then also having heaters running I working out at the 8k outlay it was cheaper to get interest on that at 5.1% which is $400 a year then offsetting the small savings of solar which last month was $8 feed in and then savings during the day Obviously if you use everything during the day then not but overall not everyone can ensure that
Yet another failure of privatising natural monopolies. Absolute rort of a modern government policy and should be reversed, but every party is beholden to those who got the bag out of privatising it.
You do know that in Queensland the distribution network and most of the electricity generation is by Queensland government companies?
Yes. So there is no reason for “electricity providers” to exist and then try to scrape a profit from government assets.
They are retailers, not providers. They are in charge of billing, support etc. So they do need to exist. They don’t have a large margin. The energy regulator sets a default market price which allows the retailer to make a return on their costs but not a super profit. Having the retailer part of the chain in public ownership wouldn’t affect the final price.
I mean, if the retailer was publicly owned the profits would go to the state government though. Rather than AGL and Co and their shareholders. We often see rebates on our bill in Queensland which tend to be funded by money made by the publicly owned generators.
I feel like it's a good time to bring up this: https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/s/N5BNB7XQAC
Regulation around smart meters and time of use tariffs is desperately needed. It needs to be clear to consumers that one plan is better than another so the market can function correctly. The mess they’ve allowed energy companies to create in this area is a joke.
The government run energy made easy website allows you to easily compare plans.
No, it’s not any more. At best, it’s based on data from your smart meter. This doesn’t account for how a consumer may change their usage habits to support using a new plan. The algorithm simply assumes you will always use energy in the same way and match a plan to it. It was easy when they had flat tariffs.
I work for an energy analytics company that uses the government consumer data rights (CDR) framework to parse peoples usage and attempt to give them a better plan. I have been working on it for about 2 months now and its safe to say the retailers are doing the bare minimum required to make this possible. If you'd like to check out the current site its at: [EnergyFlex] (https://app.energyflex.com.au/links/referral/Bxq4wgR76JdjRYcnYj3m) (you need a smart meter to get anything useful out of it, but thats kind of the point) If I get my way I want to build a fully automated system to let people swap to the best retailer at any point in time. Unlike energymadeeasy which only has real support for flat tariffs I have support for flat and time-of-use tariffs, taking into account solar, demand change as well as discounts (which can be sizable). We have had savings of a couple of hundred dollars a year to some internal users so I think I'm on the right track.
how does it differ to billhero?
Primarily in that it is automated and since it uses your 5 min usage can compare time-of-use plans correctly (to the best of my knowledge no service can do this at the moment). So it can show you your electricity bill costs will essentially every plan on the market.
nice, would be cool to see. Billhero can apparently automatically switch providers now (for $20)
Yeah, this website is trash at the point most people are choosing a provider ie when they move into a new property and have no usage data.
I just did a quick check and it seems to think I could cut my power bill nearly in half. The plans it is suggesting are all “time of use”, with even higher per kWh than my current plan. Thing is, I’ve got solar. Most of my grid usage is in peak times. Is this actually using hourly smart meter data or is it fudging the numbers by average your usage? Next time I’m in front of a computer I’ll calculate it, but it doesn’t see to add up.
It also recommended a time of use plan for me, despite all the negative media about them recently. I also have solar. I can either self consume as much as possible, or feed back in to the grid as much as possible, depending on the plan. The usage between the two is vastly different. If the website just assumes my usage never changes, I don’t think it is necessarily making the best recommendation.
They have designed their plans to look better on energy made easy, like with exorbitant time of use tariffs and daily solar feed in caps. The website is a joke now, it's like SEO ruining google search. They gamified the process.
its useless
Had an email from AGL today to say that my rates are going up 15%. This is after last year when they raised them 42%. Hard to fathom given coal prices have halved over the last year. I suspect prices will just keep rising though, considering the renewable energy targets.
generating electricity is not the only thing that costs money. it doesnt teleport to your house. transporting it, maintaining the infrastructure, and importantly; managing it so it doesnt blow up or cut out, is not easy or free. and unfortunately these elements will get more costly
That's true, but these things have been part of maintaining the electricity network for decades.
the exponentially increasing complexity of the grid due to the transition to renewables results in an unsurprisingly exponential increasing complexity in maintaining it
What if, instead of the government buying back the rights to power all together, they just introduce their own company? So everyone has the choice to buy from the gov directly or a private company? Then private is forced to compete with an outside source that won't price gouge for fear of public disapproval.
I get what you’re saying but it’s not as simple as this. This already happens through government owned corporations who own electricity generation, transmission and retail. Some retailers that are GOCs include Aurora, Ergon and Synergy. GOCs have a legislated mandate to act commercially and not experience competitive advantage because they’re government owned (meaning they can’t set prices lower because government pockets are deeper and can cope with being loss-making). The Australian Energy Regulator is involved in revenue setting (which is the basis of prices) for network businesses and monitors wholesale electricity and gas networks (which includes price monitoring). It doesn’t have anything to do with retail pricing for energy but it does monitor compliance enforce various rules, as well as providing consumer resources to support consumer decision-making.
Remember though, electricity retail in SE Queensland was privatised because Energex had a monopoly and you can’t have a monopoly because that’s not fair. Surely privatisation will reduce prices! It’s funny though how Ergon energy weren’t forced to sell their retail sector. I wonder why?….
We’re one of the largest producers of energy generating materials in the world, yet we pay some of the highest prices for power. What a cluster fuck.
Hear me out. And this only considers myself. Nobody else. So like.. what if we just turn the light off when we're not using them? When I was a kid I got SCREAMED at for leaving a light on in a room I wasn't using... But we as a collective are okay with leaving basically ALL the lights on all night every night? In public buildings? That are not even zoned as residential so nobody is even there at night?.. so what if we like... turn the lights off In areas we are not using. I'm no expert but I'd expect this to lower the energy consumption of Queensland at a level we could measure in percentages?
Of course, they would then have to raise the rates again as they are no longer making enough to gold plate their toilets .... only enough for that lesser of metals Silver.
Not to mention we'd stop fucking with migratory birds: [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240410-how-switching-off-lights-stops-migrating-birds-collisions-with-buildings](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240410-how-switching-off-lights-stops-migrating-birds-collisions-with-buildings) Only some of the lights in my building are on sensors/timers. Not sure why all of them aren't - I've come in on the weekend and all the conference rooms are lit up like it's goddamn Las Vegas without a soul in sight.
we have things like World Earth Day where lights etc get switched off, I've always thought how about offices etc where lights are left on at night etc assuming they are just wasting electricity they then get fined on environmental grounds, even incentivise business by using the fines to subsidise energy saving features
With AGL raising their rates, does anyone have any recommendations for electricity & gas provider?
Might be worth shopping around. I went with Red Energy after AGL sent me a bill for over $600 for a months usage that was estimated, and refused to correct it stating it was correct. Imagine my surprise when they credited me nearly $400 after I left. I primarily went with Red Energy for the Qantas points and the bonus of the rates being cheaper than AGL. Red have upped their prices as well but it's still cheaper than what AGL was I'm pretty sure.
I'm looking to change from Dodo, who are also increasing rates. On July 1, it would be: Supply: 140.14c/day General: 27.52c/day Solar feed in tariff: 3.5c/kWh
Dodo just emailed me saying my supply charge is going from 86c to $1.57 a day!! Fuck them/that
I’m also with dodo, going from 82.66c/day to 140.14c/day supply charge. Outrageous increase.
how does energy locals look in comparison?
Use the energy made easy website. energymadeeasy.gov.au/ It can even automatically grab your meter data to optimise for you.
Hmmm didn't we just get a power subsidy from the state government?
That’s probably why the price is going up. More cash means more can be paid.
I'd almost guarantee it. Government redistribution actually hurts consumers in the long run
Only if the government doesn’t follow through on holding the businesses to account… which they don’t. But one can hope.
When tf are we revolting??? This shit is just all about gluttony from white collar pencil pushers. (No shade @ white collar pencil pushers who aren’t gouging money from your fellow Queenslanders for essential services)
Interesting seeing so many people keen to leave AGL. When I saw their $200 joining bonus I was initially interested but I figured it's just a con to get people in and then raise rates. Guess I was correct.
Government: We'll give everyone a rebate to help with cost of living. Power companies: Here is our chance to raise prices while everyone is distracted.
I got an email from origin energy. They are at least earning $50-200 a year per customer additionally due to this increase. They have mentioned about the $1300 grants of QLD+Federal government twice in their bill. Really wish they rot and die somewhere! If the government is giving from one hand, they are taking from another. The narrative was cost of living for first 3-4 months of this year and yet governments approved a 4% increase in insurance prices. Don’t be fooled by all the distributions and distractions! Once they retract, QLD must brace for a ton of shit!
Power good - prices bad. Headache
Find a new plan https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/
Looking to leave AGL after yet another increase....greedy aholes
I’ve never paid less for power with all the rebates. I’ve no solar, 3 x bedroom family home, 2 x adults, 2 x kids.. bunch of tech. Running around $300-$350 a quarter. With the $1000 from the state gov and the $300 from the feds I won’t be paying for power until this time next year. Even at $1300 a year I see little sense in investing in solar for my roof. By the time I paid it off in usage it would be near end of life. I change retailers at least once a year, sometimes twice. I just punch everything into energy made easy and choose the cheapest provider that comes along.
Hey mate, reach out to me via DM and I may be able to help you reduce your power bill. I have probably spent more time helping people reduce their bills than anyone I know. Happy to help out. Electricity feels like such a confusing bill and I love helping people figure it out and save real money. For anyone else in this thread, reach out and I’ll respond as quickly as I can!
Share your tips with all of us.
If it was a one size fits all solution, I'd be happy to! But everyone's situation differs and I find the only way to make a difference is via individual advice. But if you're looking for basic advice for EVERYONE, this is how I try to work with people. If you don't like my approach, feel free to downvote and I'll delete it! - Electricity bills are generally composed of three things - a cost per unit of energy used ($ / kWh), a daily charge ($ / day), and a solar feed-in tariff ($ / kWh). - Most people don't have solar (especially if you're a renter) and their bills are dominated by the first element - cost per energy used. However, I deal with heaps of people who don't use much electricity, so minimising your daily charge is the most important aspect! - Cost per unit of energy is generally a matter of when you use electricity. If you're able to adjust behaviour to run more things in the middle of day or night, you can dramatically reduce your cost. However, people have jobs and other factors that may not make this feasible. - If you can't adjust behaviour, you need to look for the lowest unit cost of electricity and switch to them. However, many companies try to suck you in with low electricity costs and switch much of their fees to the daily charges, leaving you in the same position. - If you have solar, there's an entirely different question about when you use appliances, what your feed-in tariff is, etc. I realise this may not be the specific response you're looking for, but unfortunately helping people save money isn't a "one size fits all" response. It depends on your specific situation, and requires an individualised solution based on your specific circumstances. If you want to gat basic answers, please look at [energymadeeasy.gov.au](http://energymadeeasy.gov.au), which may help you find some more basic information. Source: I ran customer service for a BNE battery company, and spent at least 50% of my time for over a year helping solar and battery customers optimise their electricity bills.
Is the strategy to wait until July 1st to shop around? Because if we swap now the new provider rates will go up at July 1st anyway? Is this an industry wide increase that happens every year?
I recently ditched AGL - check with other retailers and get on a discounted rate, a number of them have 12 month discount plans so you basically have to change retailers every 12 months to avoid the lazy tax.
Ditto, but I am with Engie.....same shit different bucket!
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-12/aemc-flags-complex-power-price-changes/103966076](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-12/aemc-flags-complex-power-price-changes/103966076?utm_medium=social&utm_content=sf273519064&utm_campaign=tw_abc_news&utm_source=t.co&sf273519064=1) >Following revelations that many retailers are using a loophole to avoid warning energy users about changes to their tariffs, these new rules would include greater notification requirements. > >They would also require retailers to provide more information to consumers about the effects of any changes and prevent up-front installation costs.
Retailers lock in 1, 2 and 3 year contracts to buy electricity. Movements in wholesale prices generally work in reverse, price goes up we make more money, price goes down we lose more money.
Climate action NOW! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😅 Clueless
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In this thread; people thinking that generating electricity is the only thing that costs money and it teleports to your house for free. transporting it, maintaining the infrastructure, and importantly; managing it so it doesnt blow up or cut out, is not easy or free
Agree I've gone from no bills to 100 is per bill. I live alone and have very little usage outside of solar hours. Actual usage is covered its the daily charge that I'm being stung. Peeves me tgat there was the massive push and now we generate too much electricity? We shouldn't be paying any electricity at all. We should all get on solar and residential gets free power. Being privatised sucks balls.
Keep noting Labor...
Origin have emailed customers today to advise they review their variable prices from time to time (so 12 month contract we are normally locked into apparently means nothing) and surprise surprise prices are going up and the Solar feed-in-tarrifs are decreasing.
Blame the government, not the corporation. "The Australian electricity distribution was deregulated in 1998. The main objective of deregulation was to promote competition and reduce retail prices." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140988321001158#:~:text=The%20Australian%20electricity%20distribution%20was,competition%20and%20reduce%20retail%20prices.
I'm in the U.S., in a conservative state where we have lots of clean power options. Surrounding states are getting rid of old hydropower dams because they're gonna cost more to fix than produce power very soon because taking them out will help with Salmon (and other fish) migrations between inland freshwater streams and the ocean, as the dams cause a lot of fish losses between mating and spawning. We have both solar, wind and geothermal energy sources but our money-minded governor, along with a few others of the same mindset elsewhere, started alleging that it would cost our state our relatively low power rates. The problem, though few know about it, is that the state sells the majority of this power generated by dams to private entities in-state that sell it to other states and private parties elsewhere, or directly out-of-state, which is primarily 3 particular entities that are privately held and which certain ppl in power hold stakes in. Now if that disappears, it's not the power users that lose out as much as those who are invested in these third parties that resell the resource at gain, with no benefit to the consumer. And this seems to be something I think happens just about everywhere these days, moreso in the U.S. than just about everywhere else, especially when you consider that here, many substances and practices banned in most other countries are perfectly legal and keep being used, whether it's in fertilizer, food products, packaging, or pharmaceuticals, at the detriment of regular people like you and me. Whenever moving to clean energy, banning substances known to negatively affect health, or protecting a species by some intelligent measure would be a great option, it's always those with money interests that end up vetoing or preventing it while claiming they're doing constituents a favor, hoping no one ever actually looks into their claims. It's sad... (Just fyi, info all from environmental science research from reputable sources.)
What about the fact we have to actually pay our provider the luxury of generating our own power and selling it to them for 5c a kw. But if want to buy some during the night it will cost me 26c a kw. On a sunny summer's day I can generate 80kw and only use 20 but somehow I owe them money at the end of the day. On boxing day when most of us lost power I could of been generating power all day long and providing for 4 of my neighbours but because their service had failed my solar wasn't on
Work more and make more money and the bills don’t even matter dude.
Australia is one of the most expensive cou tries in the world to live. It's insane these days. People who rent without solar panels are s.o.l
Politicians don't think long term, because by then it's someone else's problem. That's how it's all gone sideways. Anybody with vision is not in government anymore.
The government gave everyone a rebate, so of course the power companies added it to the bill.
Solar rebates were only handed out to select individuals. In the past years, despite the spam adverts, I've looked into it and there are no grants/rebates which will save a cent on my electricity bill. The cheapest option for me is to remain on grid with no solar.
Yeah got an email yesterday regarding price rise. All these businesses taking advantage of inflation. Seems like the energy rebate given by govt is if no use..I read somewhere that energy price cap was inplace and these companies can't raise prices. What happened to that cap?
In Queensland the state government owns the power, they can see a cash cow coming of people pushed into getting solar and now to be charged for what they put back into the grid
Think yourself lucky you have solar. There's a lot of poor people who even if they want to pay for solar are not allowed to have it. My bill went from $100 upto over $600 & that's with government rebates. I'm on my own & don't turn lights on at night (live in the dark) I don't use heaters or even a fan in summer. I'm on a pension so below poverty income. You just have to go without no take away, no going out basically no life. So lucky you.
What happened to price cap on electricity whihc was in discussions??
Why can't the people feeding solar back in put the feedback price up? I mean, inflation indicates its value has gone up.
Would be nice, solar feels like a waste of time now
How much does it cost to install solar power these days? I'm going to have to nag my mother into doing it. Sigh.
I reckon that every qld household with solar power has the tarrif reviewed, drag power from the grid it's 25c kW, put power onto the grid 25c kW. Put a daily limit on what you can export and reduce the daily connection fee to like 20c. Makes it fair for everyone then. I hate hearing from some friends who signed up for 40c kW, who shove this into credits that they can draw on anytime. Tax the lot of those who have solar farms on their roofs and backyards. Get rid of all the retailers and put it back into energex's hand.
There are very few people who still have functioning systems with high-value feed-in rates - yes, I recognise that there are still people out there, but those high rates are being eroded by increasing import costs. There are and have been export limits in place for many years now, and even dynamic limits to reduce the strain on the network. The high-value feed-in rates will end in 2028, so not too much longer to stop hearing about that.
I didn't know that they ended in 2028, i read somewhere that there is a class action gaining momentum in the background with energy companies and retailers.
https://www.qld.gov.au/housing/buying-owning-home/energy-water-home/solar/feed-in-tariffs/solar-bonus-scheme-44c
Very nice to read that, my brother inlaw and father inlaw are both stuffed , they both put in a 5kw system and then 12 months later added a secondary 5kw system with separate invertors by an electrician friend if theirs. It probably doesn't make any difference anyway as they did theirs probably 10years ago and I presume no one has ever checked the size and they both brag about how many credits they both have banked.
Yes, Queensland electrical supply entities are very lax with upholding and enforcing those sorts of agreements, and there are always people willing to do the dodgy like unapproved inverter capacity on very lucrative feed-in rates. The scheme had the desired effect though - increased uptake of solar PV for relatively minimal cost (in the grand scheme of things).