Getting a better Energy deal - WHAT A JOKE!

[FenceFurniture]

It is a monthly bill. We have a tiered system with the current top tier 26 cents per KWh. So during the summer $200 might be for one month and $160-$180 for the other two months.

Yeah ok, so leaving out exchange rates and differeing cost of living factors (which probably neutralise each other anyway) our elec rates a re fairly comparable.

They are trying to force a time of day billing system on us. What they do is to raise the normal rates so that the TOD rates look cheap.

That sounds like what we have always had here: Peak, off-Peak, and for some people "shoulder". Peak is usually 2-10pm but that can vary a little.

And we're not even getting kissed.

Vaseline?

[Bushmiller]

I don't know when these larger discounts started coming into play but it has obviously been for a while. This is the part that REALLY irks me. They should be forced to offer everyone the same rates because if that does not happen it just means that I'm getting a better rate than you at your expense. You are unknowingly subsidising me and that is unAustralian, ESPECIALLY given that the most likely people to be on the high rates are those who can least afford it (like my pensioner mother).

Brett

That is such a good point. It always seems to be that those who are least able to afford are those who end up paying. When you come to negotiation most people are hopelessly equipped to deal with such an event.

This type of scenario has occurred before in other areas: Such as when it was proposed that employees negotiate with their employers for their salary back last century: As somebody said, how is the average bloke going to do that with the likes of John Elliot (hadn't fallen from grace at that stage.)

So yes, the competitive market is not necessarily a win for everybody. It may not be a win for most people unless you have a background in sales and negotiation.

One other issue that I don't think has been addressed in electricity costs is the service charge and in fact it is my understanding that this is an area that is being rorted even more than the KWH rate.

Regards
Paul

[BobL]

I don't know when these larger discounts started coming into play but it has obviously been for a while. This is the part that REALLY irks me. They should be forced to offer everyone the same rates because if that does not happen it just means that I'm getting a better rate than you at your expense. You are unknowingly subsidising me and that is unAustralian, ESPECIALLY given that the most likely people to be on the high rates are those who can least afford it (like my pensioner mother)

It was part of old school "Un-Australian" behaviour of a "fair go for everyone" but as Paul says, welcome to the brave new world of "Competitive business behaviour". It's the same class of behaviour as "hundreds of brands of breakfast cereal" , ultra complex and confusing mobile phone and internet contracts, etc and no different IMHO to pyramid schemes.

The whole idea is to confuse, baffle, inconvenience, and swamp the consumer with so much BS that the bulk of them give up and consume what is the least inconvenient. It is couched in terms of "offering consumer choice", note how many advertisers of Health Insurance and mobile phone contracts flog this aspect of their services.

OTOH, single fixed prices for everything is seen by many as too socialistic, anticompetitive and leading to a stagnant or even backwards spiralling economy.

Some sort of balance between the two is needed.
Perhaps "negotiating a deal" could be a new subject at school"?
If we wait long enough maybe Trump will introduce this?
No, wait, that would be informing the general population, can't have that can we.

[FenceFurniture]

One other issue that I don't think has been addressed in electricity costs is the service charge and in fact it is my understanding that this is an area that is being rorted even more than the KWH rate.

Indeed. I think I'm glad you brought that up, but I really must do something about my blood pressure. It may also explain why there was such a modest 7.67% increase in the supply charge (they probably thought they had better put it up too, otherwise we might get suspicious of a rort).

The retailers charge us a daily fee to supply the elec and gas to the property. In fact they do no such thing - it is the wholesalers who supply and do meter readings. In the Blue Mntns that means Jemena Gas and Endeavour Electricity. Indeed, most of the time, once it is connected there is nothing more to do - just read the meter every 3 months. I did have a new meter installed a year ago (dunno why, and I didn't even know until a month ago), and I think this might have been when my meter fell off the database. There was a major problem out on the footpath (in front of here) about two years ago, but I doubt that had owt to do with owt.

I have no doubt that the wholesalers just charge a fee per kWh (which may vary with time of use, how much each retailer buys etc), and have no "per property" supply charge - that could get very cumbersome for them in billing the retailers, particularly with customers flying around all over the place from retailer to retailer.




Imagine how cheap the elec could be without that wasted $750-900 debacle just for me. I'm just one customer out of millions. As I said in the email, I know that AGL doesn't care about wasting other people's and company's time and resources, and you can't factor my time into the cost of elec equation, but it is still ~$500 wasted from energy cos just on my account. Not all people have the same fiasco that I did, but it would be reasonable to assume that there would be some 4-5 hours spent by various energy people on any given account transfer (and cancellation, and transfer again ).

So you could probably say that $100 per transfer is wasted money, plus the time and aggravation of the customer.
"The who?"
"The customer - you know the poor sod that keeps you in business."

[FenceFurniture]

OTOH, single fixed prices for everything is seen by many as too socialistic, anticompetitive and leading to a stagnant or even backwards spiralling economy.

Some sort of balance between the two is needed.

Yes, and dead easy to do too. Force them (legislation) to all have the same thresholds - if they really need more than one - and to discount the same part(s). That way no spreadsheet is needed - the headline rates will tell us all we need to know. After all, energy supply is a right, it is fundamental to life - just like food supply. It's not like it's some luxury item.

And I certainly agree that they are deliberately making it as complex as possible. You only have to look at the bills to see that. My April to July bill this year is almost unintelligible.

• First section is "Previous Balance and Payments" which is a list of my advance payments. They are not in chronological order, two of them have been split into two without explanation (and the dates are not significant either, like July 1). So the total of these is $448.96, but that's the last mention of that figure.
• Then, still on the same page, we have "New charges and Credits" (funny, I thought we'd just had Credits, above). There are two sections of four lines each for this because of the price rocket on July 1. At the bottom of this page, even though the details haven't finished yet, we have the account balance and how to pay it taking up the bottom 30% of the page. But wait, there's more.....
• So then, because of that premature and ridiculous waste of space on how to pay, we have the last of those 8 lines above, all with repeated headings (unnecessarily)
• Then we have two more credits lines, and a total credits, which doesn't include the payment credits, co'z they don't call them credits....are you following? C'mon, keep up....
• Then we have the total of charges and credits, but not including the payment credits, and we have the GST.
• Then, without mentioning the payments we have an account balance.

That is all spread over 3 pages of confusion, when I could document very clearly in about 60% of one page.

Anyone would think they are trying to confuse me deliberately.

Perhaps "negotiating a deal" could be a new subject at school"?
If we wait long enough maybe Trump will introduce this?

Bob, give yourself an uppercut! I'd rather go through this fiasco than have a clown leading the world into an abyss any longer than necessary.

[Bushmiller]

Bob, give yourself an uppercut!

Is that a discount in excess of 25%? Or is it the one handed out by a bunch of fives?

Regards
Paul

[FenceFurniture]

No discount.

[Chris Parks]

So if I pay a usage fee which I forgot was part of the bill I should be able to negotiate to sell Brett excess electricity from my feedback into the grid, I reckon that is fair.

[woodPixel]

The cure to high prices is high prices.

A classic economic saying, that one.

I'd say we are witnessing the final death throws of the entire electricity market. Short of government interference, the whole shambles is about to self implode. Which is a good thing.

There must be 1000 IT/tech companies looking a the FAT PROFITS of this industry and thinking... how can we get a cut of that fatted calf.... solar farms, monster batteries, gel/plastic batteries, compressed air storage, hydrolyzation, pumped water gravity systems, hyper-local generation and localised delivery systems OR smart-swapping and distro/saving schemes within tight neighbourhood groupings.... instant-on on-demand peak delivery systems that can stop and start within 5 minutes.

You wonder why AGL wanted out of Coal with Hazelwood/Liddell/etc? It has exactly zero to do with anti-coal. They are doing it for they know their companies have been tied to the post and given their cigarette. They know that if they are stuck with that white elephant they are doomed. They will sell it to the government who will proceed to burn everyone slowly alive with spectacular financial mismanagement. AGL et.al. will, of course, wring their hands in consternation in public, but it will be high-fives behind the doors.

The market always projects and peaks before it collapses. We are at the very top of the post GFC chicxulub tsunami.

Not much one can do about it today, other than turn everything off and screw the bastards as FenceFurniture has done with relentless negotiations.

[FenceFurniture]

I have a radical idea for home generated solar but the energy companies won't like it or perhaps they will. I should be able to buy the right to use the network like we have registration on cars, then I should be able to negotiate with someone to buy my excess power that is fed into the grid which I think would be a win for everyone. I bet the energy prices come down then!!

I don't think it should matter owt about the energy companies - we have to start thinking about the country's energy needs as a whole - ant mentality, if you like. At the moment we are just rewarding them for bad behaviour, so that will not just continue, it will get worse.

So if I pay a usage fee which I forgot was part of the bill I should be able to negotiate to sell Brett excess electricity from my feedback into the grid, I reckon that is fair.

Indeed you should be able to do this. There are plenty of rooves around that are not suitable for solar power - shaded, wrong shape, wrong aspect etc etc. So if you have a neighbour that is one of those unfortunates then I think you should be able to put up as many panels as you can and sell off the excess - even if it means the neighbour stores it in a battery for later use at peak times (this would be in a few year's time, when batteries are commercially viable).

So if the best peak rate the neighbour can get is say 20c, and you can get say 12c selling back to the grid, then sell it to your neighbour for 16c and you both win. Does the Energy co win? Probably not but we would be taking the strain out of the system. Who cares about them anyway - I have as much sympathy for them as I do banks.

Would that lead to a demise of energy retailers? Well I would think that it probably would certainly lead to some thinning of numbers, but that is going to happen anyway as the country goes more solar over the next ten years.

It is inevitable.

After all, W.T.F do they do to earn their money? The get a reading from a wholesaler and turn it into a convoluted bill - that's it. BIG DEAL! At the same time they manage to aggravate half the country. Good riddance I say!

The best advice I can give to anyone is to put up as many solar panels as you can now (i.e. as many as your roof will take), while the installation rebates are still high (they will drop by 1/14th per year for the next 14 years from January 2018). At $700 per kW (not kWh) the rebates are not to be sneezed at. Install an inverter that can easily accommodate a battery in 3-5 years time, when the battery tech is right. The point being that whilst solar panel tech may become a little cheaper or more efficient, it is pretty good now especially with the rebates on offer, and waiting longer for cheaper probably doesn't commercially stack up. Opposite story with batteries though.

That then allows people to get rid of gas heating (and wood fires if they like). It also paves the way for more or less "free fuel"electric cars (I know there are various debates about their virtues, but they will come).

For the uninitiated: do not confuse rebates with Feed-In-Tariffs. Rebates are for installing the panels. FITs are for the excess lecky that you send into the grid.

[FenceFurniture]

I'd say we are witnessing the final death throws of the entire electricity market.

Yep, and I reckon Mike Baird sold the Poles & Wires at the peak time - they won't be worth a bumper once Solar has a decent take up rate. Maybe I'm missing something, but to me it was an exclusive case of the Govt being ahead of the game of Private Enterprise. Buying the Poles & Wires as the country is transitioning to Solar (inc going off-grid) makes as much sense as keeping Liddel power station going for an extra 5 years at some staggering cost.

[FenceFurniture]

Rightio, I thought I might spruce up the spreadsheet and attach it to see if anyone finds it useful - please let me know (it was RATHER a lot of work to make it publishable).

Now I'm going to caveat the hell out of this:

• the cells that are pale blue (or should be) are the ones where you can change the data
• if you change any other cells then you're on your own baby - I've locked them but anything could happen
• the kWh figures shown are my own, and you need to change them to yours, from your last 12 months bills
• if you are billed monthly then you need to aggregate three months into one entry
• the rates shown are for postcode 2780 (which applies to most of the Blue Mountains)
• the rates may or may not be up to date - I got them 6 weeks ago - anything could happen in that time
• you may not even have some of those suppliers I have shown
• some of the suppliers have a tiered system for Peak usage - the spreadsheet does not allow for that, so bad luck for them for making it more difficult than it should be
• if the equations are wrong then suck it up - it was my best effort (and if you're that smart you can create your own)
• the low income rebate varies from state to state - do your own research and enter the correct figure, or just delete the one at the top
• I do not have a 3-tier meter (which would include Shoulder or Controlled Load 2) - that's why those columns are blank
• the best price supplier should get some pale green highlight in their name and the yearly total.
• don't forget to delete the "YES" in column A if the supplier does not discount the daily supply charge (there are 3 flagged "YES")
• I have unlocked the pale blue cells and locked the sheet - this should make it idiot proof for deleting formulae
• If you are not an idiot then you can unlock the sheet and go your hardest. There is no password.

Other than that....bon apetit!

[Chris Parks]

The saviour for the energy companies is going to be high density housing where apartments etc do not have an individual roof for solar generation. I have just found out that the inverter that we are using can divert excess power to a hot water system or some other load instead of exporting it which makes me a happy camper. It doesn't do it as well as the dedicated units but it will do it. The people who are going to cop it in the neck for electricity are those who can least afford it and that view is starting to be recognised and the political party who decides to bite the bullet and do something about the cost of energy in Oz is going to win power in a landslide.

[FenceFurniture]

The saviour for the energy companies is going to be high density housing where apartments etc do not have an individual roof for solar generation.

Won't be long before solar paint is available though.

I have just found out that the inverter that we are using can divert excess power to a hot water system or some other load instead of exporting it which makes me a happy camper. It doesn't do it as well as the dedicated units but it will do it.

Eggsellent! It will be cheaper than getting the dedicated jobbie though.

The people who are going to cop it in the neck for electricity are those who can least afford it and that view is starting to be recognised and the political party who decides to bite the bullet and do something about the cost of energy in Oz is going to win power in a landslide.

Without a doubt (on all counts).

[kungsleden]

Very good, informative thread.
I am moving back to Woodend (Victoria) end of December. We are considering solar energy, but will need to do it "right", i.e. grid connection or not, buy panels now or wait...
Anyone here willing to answer questions?

Cheers,


Christophe