Who do you get your electricity from?

[kgwilson]

Since the retail electricity market was opened up about 10 years ago there have been dozens of retailers and new ones popping up all the time. Originally I was with Country Energy when the house was built. They were absorbed by Origin & the prices began to increase. I have changed several times when better deals turned up. These included Momentum Energy, Red Energy and Energy Australia and now Elysian Energy and I am about to change again to Simply Energy. I have solar panels but it is only a 2kw system & I use just over half of what I produce.

 

Each time I used a comparison website to find out the best deal. Initially there were contracts with timeframes and exit fees etc but these have largely disappeared. There is always a timeframe for the big enticement discounts. I've only been with Elysian since 25th of January & have had 4 monthly bills all of which they have stuffed up & now they have changed the plan with 15 days notice & reduced the amount of power I get for the money, hence my latest change.

 

Mainly due to the price of coal, generation costs have doubled in the past year & at this stage there is insufficient wind & solar & zero pumped hydro to take over all of which is now infinitely cheaper than dirty polluting coal.

 

My latest deal with Simply Energy is 23% off the NSW Government set rates including the supply charge which ends up close to half of the bill. The downside is the solar feed in tariff is only 5c a KWh. A few years ago I was getting 18c a kWh.

 

I have a time of use meter with Peak, Shoulder, Off Peak and Feed in kWh numbers.

 

Electricity is a product where quality is the same no matter who the retailer is & you don't get a choice how it is delivered so for me cheapest is always best. How retailers package their deal is the bit you have to navigate through to find out who has the cheapest deal.

[Yenn]

When the energy market opened up it didn't happen in central Qld, so we have only one provider, Ergon, which I believe is Qld government owned. Funny thing is that our prices per kW/h have decreased in the past couple of years, but there is a basic charge which I suppose is for the infrastructure, that wasn't there when I signed my contract over 40 years ago.

Same thing with mains water, a lot of money for infrastructure, plus a cost per Kl. With my using only a small volume of water it works out very expensive on a kl basis.

[onetrack]

Here on the left coast, we have little choice, there's only one main electricity provider, the Govt-owned Synergy, a corporation that runs what is known as the SWIS (South West Interconnected System), which is the electricity network that covers around 98% of the populated SW of W.A.

Synergy has a legislated monopoly over the SWIS, which is probably not a good thing in the long term.

 

Outside the SWIS, in a number of isolated towns, Horizon Power (also Govt-owned) supplies the energy - but in those towns, once again, there is no option to source your energy from other suppliers, only the choice to generate your own.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synergy_(electricity_corporation)

 

Edited May 26, 2022 by onetrack

[octave]

Powershop

[spacesailor]

1. ALL THE BULL
2. The providers spout ! TRY getting the cents per killowatt hour.!.
3. I gave up trying. So staying with RED.
4. spacesailor

[red750]

AGL. Rang them up and had a chat. Got a new lower rate backdated, with a refund that put my account in credit.

[facthunter]

(Allegedly) one of the worst of the polluters.. On the connection fee I consider the around 300 dollars to be good value for the privilege. Renting oxy and acetylene cylinders is far more.  The value of electricity is based on supply AND demand. If your solar comes at a time when they have too much It has a negative value. .Nev

[spacesailor]

IF !

They have too much, they now have the power to cut your solar, & make you pay for their gris supply.

HOW ABOUT.

Second hand panels,  Not tied to the grid, just connected to your air conditioning. 

Heating the house kn winter days , then cooling it for that Hot summer days.

A larg array with $ 25 .00 panels, say 5KW , would be less than $ 2500.00. Plus that inverter, and solar switch.

That leaves a battrry, that only gets used when the sun is shining.

spacesailor

[onetrack]

There are advantages to living in W.A. We all got $600 each for electricity credit in October 2020, when the Govt finally clawed back some of the money rorted off the State Insurance Commission by Bell Group in the late 1980's. It only took 32 years to recover the debt, the banks fought it every inch of the way.

 

https://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/McGowan/2020/10/Every-WA-household-to-receive-a-600-dollar-electricity-bill-credit.aspx

 

Now, because the moola is rolling in from the highly profitable W.A. industries, and the property boom in W.A., the McGowan Govt is giving us another $400 electricity credit, because the W.A. budget is well and truly in the black.

That's about 4 mths worth of power bills for us - thank you very much Mark, it's very welcome.

 

https://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/McGowan/2022/05/Strong-surplus-delivers-all-WA-households-a-400-dollar-electricity-credit.aspx

[old man emu]

8 hours ago, onetrack said:

because the W.A. budget is well and truly in the black.

 

In another thread I explained the three types of budget results that a government works with - deficit, balanced and surplus. From what Onetrack says, we can say that the W.A. budget is in surplus. This should be unpopular with the people as it says that the government is getting too much money. Usually that is because of over-taxing, but we can see that the present case is windfall money. So the Government is doing the right thing by its people - returning the money to them.

 

That's a bit populist (pork barrelling with equality). Given the nationwide crisis in the provision of health services, maybe the money could have gone to that area. But then again, there may be other bigger sources of windfall revenue that could fund the health system. Still, at least the Government is not squirrelling it away in a Future Fund for polly's pensions as another well known Government did. 

[onetrack]

The W.A. Govt is pouring a lot of money into health services in W.A. The greatest single problem with that idea is the same problem besets W.A. as the other States - where do you get the trained health professionals from to equip the expanded facilities? It's scary that in many rural and remote areas, health care is provided by a single dedicated nurse - who can't be on call 24/7/365. The country needs a major investment in health care training, not just health care facilities.

 

https://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/McGowan/2021/09/Massive-funding-boost-for-health-in-State-Budget.aspx

[old man emu]

My opinion is that the Federal Government should simply say to all intended enrolees into the several medical faculties that they won't be given a place unless they enter into a contract to serve in rural and remote areas for five years. In return, the Government will pay their HECS fees. The Federal Government already has a program in place for reserving places for those who agree to go Bush, but the length of time they have to work in the Bush is ridiculously short, and there is no HECS relief.

 

With nurses and paramedics also screaming about overwork, it may be the time to apply the same sort of thing for those careers. However, the situation for nurses and paramedics is somewhat different. Lots of people want to enter these professions, but State Governments won't spend the money to hire them.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Hear Origin received one of the biggest fines for not complying with consumer law and meeting their obligations to help distressed customers. So when I went to Google it, it appears Origin has had a few run-ins with the ACCC:

Edited June 29, 2022 by Jerry_Atrick

[nomadpete]

So that's Original Sin

[facthunter]

You got cut off without a prayer.   Nev

[onetrack]

Origin's track record really says a lot about privatisation of energy supplies, doesn't it? I'm glad I live in a State where the Govt insists that energy and water supplies will remain under Govt control, and no toll roads will ever be allowed.

[facthunter]

They are not the worst.   Nev

[Marty_d]

I often wonder how we came to the collective decision that vital services are better provided by corporations out to fatten the bottom line than government.

 

In my opinion - health (including medical dental), education (from childcare to Uni), water, power, communication (internet) - are all things that a well run country should be able to provide to its people.  The first 3 should be free and the last two reasonable.

[facthunter]

My supplier is Momentum and I'm very satisfied with that. My daughter contacted them but they didn't want more customers at  this stage and she ended up with Lumo... Hope that helps.. Nev

[nomadpete]

Believe it or not, privatising any essentail service  fails to produce lower prices to the consumer. It permits middelmen to take the cream without taking the responsibility.

[Yenn]

I hear today that Victoria has partially privatized Vicroads. That is giving private enterprise the job of collecting registration and licencing fees.

Supposedly there will be rebates for those who don't collect speeding fines or similar.

I cannot see any private enterprise taking on any job unless they can see big profits, so why can't the government do better?

[Jerry_Atrick]

It looks like a consortium led by Maquarie Asset Manegement has purchased the rights to run the vehicle registry for 40 years.. It paid $7.9bn and looks to receive approx $200m/year in management fees for it. That will give them $8bn in fees over the life time; hardly worth it for a 7.9bn outlay, so there must be otehr stuff in there as well. The state government claims it is to bolster the IT systems and give Vic a system they truly deserve.

 

To be honest, I am not sure how hard a car registry and payments system is to build, but I bet there is probably one off the shelf or ready to be customised. No doubt, it would have to integtrate to emergency services and private companies for ANPR and offences/fines, etc.

 

Somehow, I don't buy it is about creating world class IT systems for Victorians.. as they could do it a lot cheaper than $8bn management fees + a lot more in operational fees I am guessing. I somehow think this is short term gain (plug finances) for longer term pain.

[kgwilson]

Governments should always do better but they always do worse.

 

They set up a department to do something but because the people charged with running that dept have no idea how to do anything, they employ people who say they do. These people don't know so they get in consultants and then they employ all sorts of people who either know everything about nothing or nothing about everything & very soon a new bureaucracy is in place. The bureaucrats think up all sorts of ways to make everything so complex that even they don't know how anything works so they employ even more people to explain everything to the public. In the end they decide it is all far too hard and it would be far better to privatise it.

 

Simples.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I think you have just described AI!!!

[Old Koreelah]

20 hours ago, Yenn said:

I hear today that Victoria has partially privatized Vicroads…

Australia, the Lucky Country, where governments solve short-term problems by selling off a bit more of the farm.