My Absurd Power Bill Price Rise

Electricity in Australia has become bloody expensive. We have lots of coal. We have lots of gas. We have plenty of sunshine, but yet, electricity prices are skyrocketing. By all measures, we should have some of the cheapest power prices in the world, but we don’t. According to the Grattan Institute, electricity has risen 63% across the last decade on top of inflation, and it’s only getting worse! (I’ll show you my power bill soon). What the hell is going on? I mean, electricity is an essential service, critical to people’s health, safety and well-being. Prices must remain affordable unless you want society to collapse.

At my place, we used to have those old-style electrical meters where they had to send out a person to read them, but recently, the government-owned Ergon Energy updated them to those new wireless digital meters. Don’t worry, according to Ergon, this helps me!

“Dear MR DALEY. You now have a digital meter! With a digital meter, there’s no need to arrange premise access for our meter readers as we read it remotely and electronically. You’ll also receive your bills monthly which is great for managing your budget and cash flow.”

Sounds great! Well, do you think these new, awesome meters reduced my power bill? Fat chance! Here’s my latest monthly bill. I know, it doesn’t seem that expensive – $107, but to be fair to my wife and I, we use very little power. According to Ergon, we used less power than the average one-person household in our area. But that’s not the issue. The issue is the rise in power prices.

Looking closer at my bill, we can see that before July 1st prior to the price hikes, so 10th June to 30th June, the service fee was 90.4 cents per day. Now that fee you have to pay regardless of how much power you use. According to Ergon, it covers the costs of supplying and maintaining the electricity network including powerlines, maintenance, as well as costs for billing and administration. You can’t escape this fee. You have to pay it every day you’re connected to power.

However, since 1st July, this fee has dramatically increased to 109.5 cents per day. Doing the maths, this works out to be a greater than 21% increase, which is much higher than inflation, which is sitting at around 5.6% according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. And this isn’t even the power price. This is just the cost of the power poles and maintenance.

So what about the electricity price? Last month it was 22 cents per kilowatt-hour. This month, it’s gone up to 30 cents! Doing the maths again, this works out to be a massive 36.56% price increase! Does that seem reasonable to you? That’s ridiculous in my opinion.

If you ask the government what’s going on, they’ll claim it’s not their fault (noting that it’s never the government’s fault here in Australia), and they’ll give you some standard excuse – The War in Ukraine! And then who’s fault is that, and they’ll tell you it’s Putin’s fault. And then you’ll ask, “So Putin caused power prices in regional Queensland to skyrocket?”, which might make sense if you ignore the fact that the War in Ukraine only started in February last year, but power prices have been outpacing inflation for more than a decade. Not to mention that Australia is resource-rich with lots of sunshine. Shouldn’t our prices be getting cheaper, or at least, staying the same? If you ask me, something smells a bit fishy. So what do think? Why are Australia’s energy prices so bloody expensive?

HOW WILL LABOR REIN IN ENERGY PRICES?
https://grattan.edu.au/news/how-will-labor-rein-in-energy-prices/

WHY ARE OUR ELECTRICITY BILLS SO HIGH?
https://grattan.edu.au/news/why-are-our-electricity-bills-so-high-the-answers-may-surprise-you/

MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn