Electricity costs 2006/2009

Just stumbled on an old electricity bill from 2006 same energy provider,
My 2 year contract finishes with them soon and they just sent my new contract for perusal.

2006 domestic price $0.103692 / 2009 domestic price $16.8080

They now place you in two different category usages
Up to 1750kWh/qtr $16.8080
and over 1750kWh $24.8930

Wish my pay packet had increased like that since 2006
 
Highequity, or someone else might know exacty whats going on here, but I'll take a stab anyway.

Coal prices to electricity generators are done using very long term contracts. I believe those contracts were done a fair while ago, and have probably just been renewed. Coal has been generated for the last 5 years or more using much cheaper coal prices. Since then, the commodities boom and all, oil took off, coal naturally followed, and so that means electricity prices have skyrocketed.

Nothing to do with ETS's, or state governments or Kev or greenies or anything else, just purely coal prices.


See ya's.
 
2006 domestic price $0.103692 / 2009 domestic price $16.8080

2006 price is per kWh
2009 price is per MWh (1MWh= 1000kWh)

So your price has gone up from 10 cents/kWh which was just insanely cheap to 16 cents/kWh which is merely cheap. Household electricity prices stayed around the 10 cent mark for well over a decade while the excess generation capacity (and coal contracts as TC pointed out) built up by the State govts worked their way through the new National Electricity Market in open competition. Heaps of oversupply kept prices depressed.

Now we have reached the point where new generation capacity needs to be built again and the only way to bring it on is with prices at more sensible levels, which is what we are now seeing in both wholesale and retail markets, with the new capacity mainly fired by gas (coal seam methane) these days.

Best thing to do about it is to invest in energy efficiency. At these prices it starts to make sense financially. And from now on electricity on the east coast will be less a means to deliver social security (as it was vertically integrated and owned by govt) and more a function of raw supply and demand so the only direction for prices is up... which is a good thing!
 
how do i find the sites that compare electricity costs.

Haven't used it myself (doesn't help in WA!) but I've heard www.switchselect.com.au works for some but you're probably better off just directly comparing the providers available to you.


By the way, you can see what I'm talking about Here.

This is just the start of it. And the proposed CPRS is obviously not to blame because it hasn't happened! Put the rises down to massive investment required in both generation and networks, unprecedented since the 1960s, when it was all built before (so starting to fall apart around now - 50 year lifespans generally for this stuff) and we have been living off that investment since. The amounts in the CPRS are fairly inconsequential by comparison. The difference is that this time it will be users who pay instead of governments...

The upside is that some of the new generation pricing I am seeing could well see renewables be able to compete without subsidy within a 10 year timeframe, if you turn your head to one side, close an eye and look at the figures out of focus a bit! :p

We live in interesting times!
 
Electricity is "traded" on a spot market and the price changes all the time. It is actually quite interesting to see the price per Mw/hour jump up and down from $15.00 to $24.00 up to $60.00 and back down to $10.00 all day.

It's not just coal prices that determine the final cost of electricity but also all the add-on costs such as the cost of continuously building new infrastructure, transmission, wages, govt taxe and charges etc etc much like a pair of shoes cost 50c to make but you end up paying $100 for them by the time they get to the shops. In Qld and Northern NSW you have costs imposed by the generators eg Stanwell Corp who buy the coal and generate the electricity, then the transmission company eg Powerlink Qld which provides the HV transmission system and owns the electricity from when it leaves the power station to when it reaches the providers sub-stations, then the final provider eg Energex, CS Energy or whatever. At each stage there are more costs imposed which all add up.
 
Electricity is "traded" on a spot market and the price changes all the time. It is actually quite interesting to see the price per Mw/hour jump up and down from $15.00 to $24.00 up to $60.00 and back down to $10.00 all day.

I used to work at ElectraNet in SA. The whole building was littered with the NEMMCO spot price displays. It was fascinating to see the price movements.
The ENRON doco is an interesting insight into the way the prices can be manipulated. Talk about making money out of nothing. Those guys had it sussed.
Imagine signing a contract to buy x million units of electicity at $10, then calling a substation to have them shutdown chunks of the grid to make it look like there wasn't enough power to go around, this pushing up the selling price to double what you're locked in buy price is.
I know it's wrong, but you have to admire a move like that. And they just kept doing it. Over and over. Making milllions while not actually making anything at all.
 
I know it's wrong, but you have to admire a move like that. And they just kept doing it. Over and over. Making milllions while not actually making anything at all.

I don't think the many Americans who suffered various black-outs because of theses games find this admirable. :eek: Neither did the investors who lost their money, or the employees who lost their retirement funds.

Much of this "Making money" was fraudulent accounting. Some of theses guys have ended up in jail, but that is small consolation for the victims of their tricks.

Cheers,
 
I don't think the many Americans who suffered various black-outs because of theses games find this admirable. :eek: Neither did the investors who lost their money, or the employees who lost their retirement funds.

Much of this "Making money" was fraudulent accounting. Some of theses guys have ended up in jail, but that is small consolation for the victims of their tricks.

Cheers,

Like I said, it's wrong. Where were the regulators? The watchdogs? The government that's supposed to protect the workers and their pensions.
Then they tell us it's all been sorted and it will never happen again.
Then we find ourselves in the middle of a global GFC. More pensions and jobs lost. Yet the guys who created the bubble, which later burst, not only walk away with millions (billions?) but also get government bailouts (which we will be paying for many years to come) to help the,m on their way.
When the system is so full of holes, human nature will exploit any weakness in order to turn a profit, whether it's an ethical profit or not.
This was a case of deregulation gone wrong. Leaving the kids in charge of the candy shop, unsupervised.
After assurances from the corporate watchdogs that they were onto such scams, we could rest assured that our investments were being monitored and safe.
Tell that to Bernie Madoff's investors.
 
I used to work at ElectraNet in SA. The whole building was littered with the NEMMCO spot price displays. It was fascinating to see the price movements.

Yeah I worked at Powerlink Qld and they had plasma screens all over the place with the Qld and Nsw spot prices, how much was being used at any one time in each area (very interesting to see that Boyne Smelter used the same amount of electricity at any one time as the whole south Bris and Gold coast region) and various other bits and pieces.

I wonder if the Qld government did any price fiddling at all.
 
(very interesting to see that Boyne Smelter used the same amount of electricity at any one time as the whole south Bris and Gold coast region)
This is something they usually don't tell us - change to compact fluorescants, turn off your airconditioner, take shorter showers, don't water your garden on Wednesdays yada yada, and then neglect to mention that business uses WAY more power and water than residential, by some huge order of magnitude.

Does big business pay the same for electricity as the average mug in the street?
 
This is something they usually don't tell us - change to compact fluorescants, turn off your airconditioner, take shorter showers, don't water your garden on Wednesdays yada yada, and then neglect to mention that business uses WAY more power and water than residential, by some huge order of magnitude.

This is something that Hubby & I have pondered on numerous occasions. The councils still water their sportsgrounds (even when it is raining, I have noticed). Stay overnight and many Motels, Hotels & Caravan parks do not have water efficient showers. Why is it that households have to be water efficient, but business does not?

Same with electricity. Take a trip into any city and see all the offices lighted up all night. Why not have the bottom floor lights on (for security purposes) and the other floors fitted with a sensor that turns them off when not in use.
 
The really big players pay a lot less. They have negotiating power. They even get redundant power feeds and guarantees they won't suffer blackouts. Do we get that? NO.

I should just point out that many small businesses pay more for their power than residential. And that there are good commercial reasons for really big business to pay less. They take power at high voltages, averting the need to install all the messy suburban distribution networks. They can often guarantee constant demand and are often part of a demand side management program where they get turned off first in the event of system emergency. Bulk discounts on meter reading and retail management also apply in commercial reality.

Or in the case of an aluminium smelter they just shop around the govts to see who will give them the cheapest power as an incentive to install their plant in their State. Hence they get it at about the fifth of the price of everyone else - and often well below the actual cost as a result of the small ratchets in their offtake agreements. BTW no-one gets a guarantee on electricity supply - it's just the size of the compensation that differs... :p

IME the electricity industry has been more a government instrument for delivering social security to the population than anything else. If it was charged appropriately, resi tariffs would be the most expensive (which they aren't) and there would be no special senior's tariffs etc etc that currently exist.

As for installing sensors to turn off lights and a/c etc, the reality is that our power bills have been so pitifully small in terms of the cost of doing business that no-one figures it's worth the trouble of doing stuff to save it. A nice increase in the cost of power may help that cause...
 
Back
Top