Why the cost of electricity continues to rise by Jules Sanchez

We just had a series of increases in our electricity bill. And it has nothing much to do about power consumption. Many received a bill 3 times what they used to see in their statement.

In Australia, the cost of electricity has 2 major components:

1. The cost of power generation from the power plant utilities; by coal, fuel oil, wind, water dams, and other electric generating facilities, i.e. Eraring Power coal plant (NSW), La Trobe Valley PP (VIC), etc; and the other component is:

2. The cost of supply via: transmission and relay stations, transformer stations, billing, accounting, etc; i.e. Integral Energy/Origin, Energy Australia. In total, the cost from the Generation Plants (usually from remote areas) before transmitting the output to your own homes. These need gigantic and many facilities that need continuous and almost incessant maintenance. IPART, the one in-charge of cost escalation of power rates had long deferred the increases as the costs of supply have increased many times.

On the Power Generation sector, the factor of increasing the participation of more expensive recyclable (green energy components) energy supply to the Grid aside from those by Coal has significant increase on the total power rates charged.

Also, my opinion is that the Carbon “Tax” will hit further. So, the perceived “increase” after Carbon Tax would have less impact. Many must have noticed that our recent increase happened during the marketing of the Carbon Tax package. Also, we cannot fully blame the Federal government much as the power plants aside from [those] privately-owned have major State government equities.

I can go on and on as far as other political expediencies. We must however concentrate on resultant less Carbon tax (in Aus $ 26 per Metric Ton of Carbon Dioxide), so less resultant comparative power charges, positive additional revenue stream to lessen investment cost, the bottom line is less Green House effect, less pollution such that health and well-being issues are addressed, maintaining and sustaining labor number levels in the mining sectors.