Queensland power bills up 16pcMore of this horseshit here.
Posted Tue Jun 9, 2009 7:25pm AEST
Updated Wed Jun 10, 2009 6:36am AEST
The Queensland Government says the average household power bill will rise by almost 16 per cent, or around $220 a year for a typical household, from next month.
The Queensland Competition Authority has today recommended an 11.8 per cent increase to the benchmark retail price for next financial year.
The final figure will also take into account last month's Supreme Court ruling to revise last year's price rise upwards.
Bligh defends Qld electricity hike
June 10, 2009 - 4:14PMQueensland Premier Anna Bligh says a planned 16 per cent rise in the price of electricity is less than increases being imposed in other states.
Power prices in the state are set to rise by 15.73 per cent from July 1 following a decision by the independent Queensland Competition Authority.
Electricity suppliers argued successfully for their increased costs to be considered in setting the new rates, after a court ruled that the 2008/09 price hike was insufficient.
Consumers with an electricity bill of around $350 a quarter will pay an additional $55 on their bills.
"I don't like to see price rises any more than any other Queenslander," Ms Bligh said on Wednesday.
Interesting that since the money collection part of the power supply industry was sold to third parties (oh wait, that was called opening it up to competition), the price has already gone up approximately 19 percent (it may be less or more, I'm not sure, I just know it's gone up). I don't understand how the introduction of a third party collecting the money can make the product cheaper - my supplier is the only one in my area. There are some interesting stats here, if you can sift through the junk (starting with the masthead's "In the business of climate change").
Golly. It's reported that the power price rise will raise the cost of food. Yeah. Along with the thieving of the 8.3 cents per litre petrol tax rebate. Everything is going to increase in price, and noone who is productive is going to benefit from these increases.
I wonder whether many people have twigged how much everthing is going to go up when we have to support the con of an ETS, and any other "carbon-taxing" wealth-redistribution scheme.
Sure the government will subsidise, however, as I've said before, the people squawking about "the government should" completely overlook where the government's money comes from.
I understand from a sound bite today on the television news that one helpful politician has suggested that we use less electricity. Sounds like it's from the Garrett/Swan collection of helpful hints.
Many people already try to use the minimum of electricity not to save Gaia or prevent AGW (spit), but to SAVE MONEY. I know. It's an amazing phenomenon. Part of the reason I recently retired my nearly 20 year old fridge and bought a new one was that it must have been costing me abomb to run. Living in a rural area without mains pressure and sewerage I also have two pumps, one for the fresh water from the tank and one for the greywater.
13 comments:
Pay more?
Good you voted for it!
'Fraid not, sunshine.
maybe not you personally, but someone must have!
Don't think there were enough votes from the graveyard for Bligh even in Qland.
I know!
I can't believe so many people must have voted and therefore reelected them, so many times, and they're still chopping and changing and reneging all over the place.
In every state.
Some people are just stupid beyond stupid.
What WERE they thinking?
I also live in the country and we have an LNP rep.
Is this enough for the large and growing class of wealthy middle class public servants with children at private schools to question their loyalty to their pay master, the Government. At the least it may have them thinking.
Voting for the ALP's akin to partaking in Earth Hour: there's the 'vibe' of being aware of the 'issues' of the day, but attaining an actual outcome is an entirely different matter; unfortunately, the electorate's disenchantment takes a while to set in.
Kae,
There are a number of factors that are affecting the price of electricity as I mentioned in a comment to Skeeter a week or so ago.
The position in Queensland is much the same as in NSW except that you have at least built some new power stations over the last 10 years but your government remains committed to the Queensland Gas Scheme. The end result is simply increased power costs because gas costs at least three times more than coal. When you see a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) station be alarmed because it means that the station has to be dispatched 24/7 so the electricity price must be high enough at peak times for it to bid and operate at a loss at other times so overall the price for electricity must be high. Remember gas costs about three times that of coal.
Governments have been deliberately increasing the price of electricity through mandating electricity from gas and/or not allowing coal power stations to be developed. And over the years governments have not invested in new infrastructure which for electricity also includes the transmission and distribution equipment. Privatisation was an easy approach to remove these obligations from government to the extent that electricity authorities were actually privatised rather than changed to become government corporations. Overall we could debate the merits of the pricing mechanisms built into the deregulated electricity market that all the States have been obliged to adopt under National Competition policy because it could be argued that the current system (a short run marginal cost approach) does not provide the right incentive for long term investment in the electricity system. However, one benefit from privatisation was seen as the dismantling of inefficient and costly electricity authorities and to that extent I’d say that deregulation has been a success. Certainly for many of my clients (large industries in NSW and Queensland), over the last ten years or so the price of electricity about halved to be about the lowest cost worldwide.
So effectively I could summarise by saying that the system has now been milked for all it’s been worth and now the game is over. Politicians with their agendas will continue to interfere and stuff things up particularly if they pursue a green dream madness.
BTW, when I initially looked for information on new power stations in Queensland, I could only read the cache of a particular page on the Qld Mines and Energy site here. Ha, the page seems to have been removed but it could be at another location. However if you look at the cached page, it reads, “Queensland's current electricity supply is predominantly fuelled by high-quality, low-priced black coal.” Oh dear, perhaps that is inappropriate these days?
Wand, the page is still extant here:
http://www.dme.qld.gov.au/Energy/generation.cfm
They seem to have merged departments so the hostname has changed. The "Department of Mines and Energy" is now the "Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation", which is exactly the sort of department name you'd expect from an ALP gubmint, replete with 1990s-esque buzzword flourish ("innovation"?!?)
Here in WA, electricity prices are going up by a quarter after having been frozen for about a decade.
However, one benefit from privatisation was seen as the dismantling of inefficient and costly electricity authorities and to that extent I’d say that deregulation has been a success
Anyone who doesn't believe that is welcome to look at this image.
Kae et al, sorry I missed this post yesterday. (Computer problems. Have you ever tried to run Windows in 600 x 800 res. and 4 colours?)
The costs of manic environmentalism are becoming more apparent every day.
Wand, I noticed in one of your links last week that the greenies' killing of Tasmania's hydro plans means that Tassy is now paying five times as much as mainland consumers for peak power.
The Bass Strait cable which was laid at great expense to feed cheap hydro power to the mainland, is now being used to feed expensive coal-fired power to Tasmania.
Another Qld state tax increase that seems to be largely unreported is car registration fees. I renewed mine last week. It increases every year but since my 2008 renewal it has gone up by 19.6%.
I hoped to recover some of that by installing a solar generator. My application to the installers went in on 20th March, but the installers did not get to me before Mr Rudd cancelled the Federal subsidy this week.
As long as I get my $1500 deposit back, I am not fussed by losing my solar generator because the Qld subsidy of 50c per kWh for solar power-to-the-grid will probably be cancelled next week. Without that taxpayer-funded subsidy, the economics for home solar generators are a total crock. /whinge
Skeeter,
I am not fussed by losing my solar generator because the Qld subsidy of 50c per kWh for solar power-to-the-grid will probably be cancelled next week.
Whilst I appreciate your sentiments and can see why you may suggest something like that, perhaps tongue in cheek, actually I’d say the subsidy will probably not be cancelled. Simply, it’s a green mantra and the Qld government would gain nothing from cancelling it because the costs are already passed to the consumers. A feed-in tariff obliges your energy retailer to accept whatever electricity you can generate and feed into the grid. To the retailer that would mean taking a loss unless the pool price for electricity was greater than 50 c/kWh ($50/MWh). Now that would assume that your retailer was paying the pool price for electricity but mostly the retailer would be paying less for electricity contracted outside the pool.
Anyway, retailers are allowed to pass on the costs of all these green schemes directly to consumers by the addition of another line item to everyone’s electricity account. My guess is that we are already paying for these feed-in tariffs, renewable energy targets, greenhouse gas offsets, energy subsidies or whatever other fancy schemes get dreamt up. Change will only happen when enough people wake up and the schemes get abolished.
Wand, my use of the phrase Qld subsidy of 50c per kWh was a lazy attempt at brevity and is a bit misleading.
But my understanding was that our retailer Origin would be paying 6 cents and Qld State (ie taxpayers) would be paying 44 cents towards the home-solar going into the grid.
Skeeter, thanks for that detail.
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