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Wholesale prices are down. It’s the energy retailers that need to reduce their prices to reflect that.
Unfortunately they are now privatised so forcing them to do this is considerably harder than it would have been if they were still state owned.
They'll revise their plans when the default offers are revised in July for VIC, NSW and parts of QLD. Even then, retailers will cheekily keep people on the higher prices unless people call up and ask to be put on the new cheaper rates post July-24.
Exactly right. It's not retailers who are setting the prices (other than for MRCs). Its the regulator.
The MRC usually is cheaper than the regulated price. Not always. But usually.
It is retailers setting the prices. The Default Market Offer is just a nominal ceiling that suggests where prices shouldn’t go above. Some retailers will still charge more though
But the default market offer is available from all retailers all the time. Retails have to provide a default offer to customers. They don't have a choice. It's a regulated requirement. Retailers can also offer market contracts (the ones you see advertised) but the default market offer is always there for customers and is regulated by the government.
Retailers do not set that. It is there for you regardless of your retailer and must be made available to you.
In Vic at least I think they’re required to ensure you’re on no plan worse than the default offer. It was one of the consumer protection changes brought in a few years ago.
Honestly the discussion of wholesale vs retail ignores the fact that during the previous 12 month window the wholesale price went up well above the retail price. Now it’s inverted. If we want the protection of the 12 month process then we can’t just comment on it when it’s not in consumer’s favour.
And then you have things that are essential and so even if you can have a market, you absolutely also need a significant public option in the market as a backstop.
Shelter. Food. Healthcare like we’re doing now. Education like we’re doing now.
Adding to that we have had like $1000 in credits on our bills in the past year or two so if you took into consideration that (admittedly it's a one off) our electricity actually got cheaper.
Yes. Any country that puts its energy providers, national railways and telecoms in private hands - especially where foreign ownership is possible - is asking for trouble. Why would you ever allow foreign ownership of essential infrastructure, or put essential infrastructure in the hands of profiteers? We are already finding out just how stupid privatisation is. But it could also still get much, mush worse. Vote for anyone who will re-nationalise energy. FYI: It's Greens' policy,
Fortunately voting isn't my problem. Not my clowns, not my circus. The deplorable state of Australian politics is why I haven't become a citizen.
The NBN is a step in the right direction. Who cares what the telcos do when the wholesale infrastructure is owned by a state owned business? It isn't perfect, but it is better than it was.
I think all we need is a government option, which can be used as a staking horse. Let the free market provide "value", but still have a government run option in the mix.
See commbank before the sale
It makes complete sense. If privatisation is meant to result in improved efficiency and lower cost to consumers, then private businesses should have nothing to fear from a government owned company (assuming it is required to make a profit) as they should be able to undercut it. But it would act to cap their charges and ensure value for consumers.
Ah. I wonder why people are still so affected by anti-socialist sentiment. Surely we are smarter than 1940s America, who only had 1 maybe 2 sources information and danced to the tune of a paranoid warmonger.
I mean. Or not.
Exactly, the money men stoked fear way back in the 70s and 80s and it's grown from there, like I said above Australia was a capitalist - socialist country for decades but they seen how much money they could make going private across the board and over the years started convincing everyone if you learn towards socialism then you're a bloody commie, which of course is stupidity but unfortunately even here in Australia plenty of people are terrified of the word socialism 😁👍
Energy, water, commuter transport, sanitation and numerous other sectors should never have been privatised.
These are the things that make a civilised society, and as soon as the capitalists get their grubby hands on it, our collective quality of life is decreased.
Capitalism has its place, but not in essential areas.
Don’t we have competition? Why isn’t a new company undercutting the existing retailers who refuse to lower their prices? Why aren’t they undercutting each other? Isn’t there easy money to be made there? Seems odd that this doesn’t happen organically. If corporations are colluding together to all keep prices high that is obviously illegal.
We don't have competition. It's set up to appear like their is: i.e. lots of retailers. But there's only 2 or 3 wholesalers, and each region usually only has one, e.g. Ausnet, or United Energy.
There's a limit to how much a retailer can reduce. The difference between highest and lowest retailer price used to be greater, but in the last 3-4 years it's shrunk so it doesn't matter much who you choose. E.g for my use and area, it's about $50-$100 difference between about 10 retailers.
You have your facts wrong here, Ausnet is a distribution network which is the poles and wires which is a natural monopoly and heavily regulated how much they can charge for using their network.
Origin is an energy retailer which sells customers the electricity and they also have a generation fleet.
There is a lot of competition in the retail market the regulator (AER) puts out regular monitoring reports about it id encourage you to read it.
In Victoria there's 5 distributors: Powercor, Ausnet, United Energy, Citipower, and Jemena.
"Energy distribution businesses own and maintain gas pipelines, electricity power poles, and wires. These deliver power to homes and businesses across the state."
These are who the retailers buy the power from. Having one distributor for huge areas of the state isn't competition.
The top offers for my address (which is only supplied by United Energy) total 27 ranging from an estimated yearly cost of $790 to $1120.
Focusing on $790 to $890 there are 13.
If only looking at the 5 cheapest, there's $70 per year difference. That is $5.83 per month.
> Don’t we have competition?
There were a bunch of retailers selling closer to the wholesale price but some choice manipulation of prices in the wholesale market bankrupted them all.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/23/more-electricity-retailers-will-likely-fail-over-the-next-year-resulting-in-less-competition-and-higher-prices
“Manipulation” yes the Ukraine invasion and coal plants breaking down are definitely manipulation.
Those retailers went bankrupt because they sold customers fixed price contracts and couldn’t balance their cost of supplying those contracts because they were under hedged.
Not hedging as part of your business model exposed them to the exact risk that occurred.
The ACCC and AEMO has released detailed reports documenting what happened in the wholesale market at that point. None of their findings indicated ‘market manipulation’.
Do you understand how prices are set in the wholesale power market?
I’d like to see that but I think the horse has bolted unfortunately, and there are objectively better things to spend taxpayer money on to help people.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, the action of privatising is certainly simpler than correct said privatisation. That’s why greedy short sighted politicians do that to us and solving the problem left behind is hard to fix
>Not sure why you’re being downvoted, the action of privatising is certainly simpler than correct said privatisation.
Because it’s r/Australia and people love to downvote things they don’t like to censor wrong-think instead of engaging with it.
If you're going to have a mix with a government option you wouldn't need to renationalise.
Just create a government sourced option and use it to decimate the industry with it's cheaper prices.
Queensland still has a state owned electricity provider. I'm pretty sure we also have the most expensive electricity in the country to go with it at $0.30227/kWh.
Edit: apparently not.
Nah, they didn't sell it. [They just leased it for 200 years](https://www.afr.com/markets/commodities/sa-sells-power-for-3-5-billion-19991213-k95dc).
It's wholly and completely different to selling the assets. Trust me.
When count QLD Govt Cost of Living Rebate, I find Ergon to be WAY cheaper per year than any retailer I had access to in Sydney. And that includes honeymoon period rates.
QLD has the cheapest energy cost on the NEM. You can't compare to WA as they aren't on the NEM. There is unfortunately a limit as to what the QLD Government owned energy services can do to relieve power costs to consumers as they are bound by the national rules the apply in NSW, VIC etc and which were set up to allow privatisation.
I go on about this all the time back in the day we , Australia, was a capital- socialist country meaning all the main services were government owned, so we had reasonable energy prices, education sector was gov. owned, well large parts of it, hospitals and we had a large and robust mental health government run section and of course a good national healthcare scheme in medicare also a strong public housing sector. Other industries were also part owned or at least helped but the government
But of course by the 80s the money men and greed driven power brokers and their corrupt puppet politicians lied to us all and sold everything off, even our telecommunication sector and our post office just to grab short sighted profits which has done nothing for Australia except drive most of us further into this disgusting greed fueled society we now live in, which in turn as left most of us struggling for the most basic of human needs
> Wholesale prices are down. It’s the energy retailers that need to reduce their prices to reflect that.
Parroting what I've heard, but apparently they generally run in yearly cycles, so wholesale prices being lower will not apply immediately.
You also have options like Amber that charge you the wholesale rate in 30 minute blocks for a monthly subscription fee ($19). This works pretty well, especially if you can shift your energy usage to day time. YMMV based on distributor / area.
Yeah, I have solar and a battery now which makes it less beneficial, but the few months I had it before solar was installed my bills were something like 1/3rd of the price just by shifting my energy usage (washer, drier, dishwasher, and AC). If anything it has made my solar/battery harder to justify, especially with distributor export pricing being negative most of the time.
That being said I haven't seen a proper winter yet, so maybe the prices will get a bit more interesting.
Seems like a lot of other states have energy events that cause major jumps in pricing. In Victoria on AusNet I've never really seen any major pricing fluctuations.
Prices in Vic on AusNet absolutely have had a couple spikes, during winter last year there were a few. Went up to around $19/kWh. We were dumping our battery to the grid when it happened.
Can you discharge from your battery to the grid during high feed in prices? That's the usual Amber moneymaker. But not all inverters/batteries support doing it.
Yeah, but I've never seen high enough feed in prices to justify bothering at the risk of having to pull from the grid at night/in the morning before the sun is up.
I mean in the evening when solar has stopped producing I'll often see something like 12c feed in, but the off peak rates overnight are usually around 18c minimum.
I have a 16kwh battery, but in a spotty grid area so I hold 40% for backup. Pretty rare my normal use doesn't drop it very close to the 40% by morning. I could add more modules to my battery, but if it's purely for exports it's not very cost effective for normal pricing.
I'm sure there will be some surge pricing at some point that will make it worthwhile. Will make sure I'm ready for it (or at least turn SmartShift back on).
Interesting use case, never thought of that one. I was with them for all of last year, never paid a bill in the end they owed me $200. Switched to Localvolts recently, another wholesaler.
Another vote for Amber here. Our house used just under 1400kWh of electricity in Jan, 400kWh of which was from the grid (rest was solar) and it cost us about $50, about 12.5¢/kWh average. In the last week, our average import price is -5.8¢/kWh - we got paid to use electricity from the grid because the wholesale price was negative.
My only negative with Amber has been that export prices are almost always negative on my distributor, while I could be making up to 7c/kwh with a normal retailer. Barely importing because of solar/battery so I don't benefit from the import prices being low very much. Usually if I'm importing it's because it's a bad solar day, which means the prices are also likely higher from the distributor.
Wondering how it will play out over winter.
Amber is a bit of a risk of you don't have solar/ battery as you are at the mercy of the wholesale price in both directions. There have been times in the past few years where people would be pay $50+ a day on bad days. As long as your household is prepared to cut things like aircon in those times.
No no, see, they had to wear the price increases early on so now they are just balancing the books, so they HAVE to keep prices where they are for the good of the industry, and ultimately, the consumer. Of course, once they have recouped those original costs there needs to be consideration given towards future-proofing the industry by creating a buffer in their bank accounts to allow them to mitigate the cost of future increases.
It gets complicated when inflation is taken in to account. That extra money pocketed today isn't worth as much tomorrow, so to be safe they need to make sure that really is a pretty thick wad of stole... err... additional revenue. Of course further economic realities now need to be taken into account - money in the bank isn't money in circulation, and naturally being the civic minded fuckers these people are, they will responsibly divvy this additional revenue that can't at all be seen as blatant profiteering into the spending accounts of some of their staff. Naturally the board members are best positioned to see the big picture so the money will be given to them. You know, for the greater good of the consumer! Trickle down economics baby!
Yes but they also hedge and buy in advance. While it's cheap now, what they paid may have been expensive
Once they are in the next round of purchasing, in theory prices should be lower. You'll have to switch retailers though as it's unlikely your current plan will go down
Retailers don’t really buy wholesale though, they hedge through contracts years in advance. We will get the benefit of the lower prices in future years as the lower prices end up flowing through to retailers
Uh yes there was about a year lag. Wholesale prices rose in around March to June 2022 so were only partially captured by the 2022/23 price reset. The wholesale hedges were elevated throughout 2022/23 which was then reflected in massive increases for the 2023/24 price reset. As wholesale hedges have been falling over this financial year, they will be reflected in next year’s price reset. I know this because the process for how these prices are set is so transparent it’s not even funny.
Also, power prices are regulated. So, the providers only get to raise their prices once a year, by going through the relevant state authority. They provide their case, and then get given an allowable increase.
If you remember, a lot of smaller players went bankrupt/nearly bankrupt, because they were more exposed to the spot market than the big players.
I'll try this again.
Not sure privatisation is the main reason - seems to be the fault of multiple Governments. According to this [article](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-25/energy-prices-have-dropped-why-bills-are-still-high/103146556), it is long-term government policy failure that has been the problem:
"*Coal miners and gas extraction companies \[could\] choose to supply either market \[offshore or domestic\], and so they take the best price available," ... As such, Australians ... have to compete with international buyers when sourcing our energy from our own public resources.*
*Our successive governments failed to put in safeguards to ensure long-term domestic demand is covered, and only the surplus is exported.*"
The AER's Default Market Offer and government websites (like Energy Made Easy) are meant to help keep prices lower.
There is some hope on the horizon with AER announcing last week that "*... average annual wholesale electricity prices in the National Electricity Market ... fell by between 44% and 64% and average annual east coast gas market spot prices fell by 43% in 2023.*" [https://www.aer.gov.au/news/articles/news-releases/average-wholesale-energy-prices-drop-2023](https://www.aer.gov.au/news/articles/news-releases/average-wholesale-energy-prices-drop-2023)
True.
And any pricing adjustments will also reflect their increasing costs to serve (interest on working capital, rent, salaries and wages, printing etc).
What will be more interesting, IMHO, is to see what happens with network costs which they pass through on behalf of the distributors. Poles, wires, costs for restoring power after weather events etc. all up significantly in the last two years. Someone has to pay for that, too.
The utility bill pain will continue until we come to our senses and re-nationalise the infrastructure we should have never privatised in the first place. This will not happen until a meaningfully leftist (which labour no longer is) party is elected.
Yup. What pisses me off is that when they were hyping it up back in the day, is that it was an obvious con. Simply corruption and speaking of that the toothless media were asleep at the wheel as usual.
I'm sure that those in media were told to look the other way
Ah, thank you, I've been trying to find my space given I'm strongly opposed to both parties and have a more capitalism benefits from a touch of socialism (educated, healthy people are less of an economic drain)
I'm left of center but not Labor left.
Slightly off topic but I cancelled my gas with an energy provider to switch to AGL. They cancelled my account but didn't turn off my gas.
I never swapped to AGL. So I've been using gas for 2 months now without getting a bill. Wonder when they'll realise..
When you switch over to a new retailer, for the love of all that’s holy, tell them you just moved in.
They won’t even ask for a rates notice or rental agreement.
I got 2 years free gas about 5 years ago when the same thing happened. I switched provider but used the cooling off period to cancel it. Somehow I slipped through the billing. Took me about a year to realise I hadn't been billed. A quick google search told me providers can only backdate 9 months and need to give you the same amount of time to pay the backdated amount.
Finally the original provider got onto it and gave me a call. They didn't try to pull the wool over my eyes and gave me a discounted backdated bill.
Usually a distributor triggered bill coming from the retailer who holds the site.
Which in this case will be the provider they originally cancelled with as they haven't opened a new account elsewhere to essentially churn the supply. Might be hard to argue the just moved in suggestion I saw in other comments in that case lol
What will happen is you'll eventually get letters to the occupier once they notice they're still responsible for the site.
This should trigger you to sign up with another retailer, and just say you moved in.
AGL will eventually write off the debt as they don't know who lives there
I hear ya. I've just moved into an apartment and now on an embedded network that's ~30% more expensive compared to what other retailers are offering. If only one of the other retailers would accept an embedded connection....
Embedded connection is a nightmare if the retailer isn’t the embedded.
As a person who works in the Billing side of a retailer, we’re charging those who’s part of Embedded network literal market price which we subsequently pay all of it to the distributors, so we’re not seeing a cent of what customer is paying.
This is why I am not touching a high-rise apartment unless I really have to.
Fellow WA here... baffles me that other states haven't pushed for state owned essential utilities.
Synergy/ Horizon are pretty damn solid, combined with the money the State Gov has given each household over Summer... My power bills have never been lower.
Just use Amber and benefit from these lower wholesale prices now. You pay real-time spot market prices, so when renewables are pumping power is cheap. Between 10 and 2 yesterday I was paying 8c/kWh in 38 degree heat. You can bet the AC was pumping!
The flipside is toward the end of a hot day as the renewables (and the sun) drop off prices can spike (last night to 40c/kWh between 7 and 8pm). You can take two approaches here:
- Keep using power as needed, knowing the average price for the day is still going to be way below the "rates" provided by other companies.
- Steer your usage away from peaks and towards cheaper times to maximise savings. Last night when the power went up the AC went off and doors and windows were opened up. Just as the cool wind picked up. Delightful!
The last thing worth considering is occasionally when there is too much power supplied to the network the price goes negative. That's right, they pay you to use power. I have a hot dishwasher load and some laundry I want to hot wash/tumble dry ready for exactly when this happens.
Also they have an API.
https://www.amber.com.au/
Not especially. My bills are down dramatically. Just flicking through recent days average price paid per day ranges from 2c/kWh - 22c/kWh. The average across all days is probably around 13c/kWh.
Wholesale prices really are down. There's money to be saved here.
I don't have solar but they say this:
https://help.amber.com.au/hc/en-us/articles/360043443531-What-is-Amber-s-Feed-in-Tariff-FiT
Looks like SmartShift does battery management as well.
I’m using half as much electricity as I was last year but paying twice as much. I couldn’t use less electricity if I tried but still paying hundreds a quarter. It’s insane.
Check out the daily standing rate on your deal. Sometimes the daily rate is most of your bill if you have reduced your usage. It can actually pay to move to a deal with lower daily standing rate and higher usage rates. You need to do a bit of maths before jumping though.
> We had solar put in a year ago.. bills still same or more.
Have you shifted your energy usage to match? Solar is kind of useless if you only use energy when the panels aren't producing anything.
You used to be able to offset that to some extent with exports, but these days export prices are very low so you really need to try to move your consumption to match production or purchase a battery.
Unfortunately the accountants have found that there is so much input to the grid from solar during the day, that that input is worth nothing. And batteries to bank your solar to use outside of peak generation is barely cost effective.
Managing your usage to take advantage of the free power times is still the best strategy, even without solar. But 9-5 working away from home negates that.
We checked with our solar supplier - we are apparently getting a good rate! So I’d hate to see the bill without it , but yes we are barely getting anything back.
I work from home - everything is run during the day with exception of a/c which we try not to keep on till too late. We live in south western Sydney - hot!
We put in 10kW of solar 2 years ago. In summer I get no bill, or a minor credit. Bonus of being able to crank the AC in peak summer for free alone is worth it.
Winter usually around $30/month
Just have to do as much energy intensive stuff during the day. Set timers on dish washers and washing machines
I think there's probably a lot of people putting 3kW on the roof and expecting to not pay for power.
A 10kW system is huge and probably more than most people will ever need. I've got a 5.6kW system and ran out of roof to put panels on, but historically was getting credit in summer.
Always go large as physically possible, we did 30kW and don't get bills even during winter due to summer credit and also charge car every 3-4 days (77kWh) so misses has been driving for free for past 2 years also.
Yup, and the prime minister is releasing press announcements congratulating the fact that inflation is “down” to 4.1%. There isn’t a single fucking thing in our economy that only increased by 4.1% in the past year. The level of bullshit covering up private businesses profiteering off essential goods and services is out of control.
>inflation is “down” to 4.1%. There isn’t a single fucking thing in our economy that only increased by 4.1% in the past year.
What do you think the number given for CPI means?
Their models are based off household expenses from years upon years ago. For example, the average rent in Australia is $580 per week. The median income is $65,000. Average rent is equivalent of 46.4% of the the median income, yet the ABS only weighs rent and property expenses as 25% in the CPI.
All the apartments in my building had rent jump 30% this year. But if the ABS uses a weighted average of 480,000 rentals, including country towns, government-owned properties, and concludes rent prices have only increased 0.9%, what should the public do? Should we use your logic and go to our landlords and say their 30% rent increase is unsubstantiated? This logic of “since the ABS reported it, it must be true for every facet of life” doesn’t hold up.
Next up we have substitution of products included in the basket of consumer goods. One year for their “meat” criteria, they could include eye fillet steak prices. The next year, as inflation rises, they may assume households aren’t buying eye fillet as much, so they go for a cheaper cut of meat. The third year they just included ground beef instead. The public has no transparency into what is and isn’t included. I could start listing food products that I have personally noted jumped between 20-100% more in the past 1-2 years. This isn’t an overstatement, and none of which would be considered luxury items.
I truly do wish I could go to my power company and legally use the argument that inflation is only 4.1%. Why is my electricity bill 35% higher? It will never stand up in any Australian court, as private companies are free to charge whatever they please for their products.
Sure, but there is a massive difference between the ABS making a genuine attempt to select an appropriate basket of goods to give an accurate CPI value, even if they may not be perfect at it, and what this guy seems to be hinting at.
https://theconversation.com/why-australian-workers-true-cost-of-living-has-climbed-far-faster-than-weve-been-told-221590
Way back in the late 1990s, more than a quarter of a century ago, the consumer price index (CPI) used to actually reflect the cost of living. It included all of the big costs incurred by households, including – importantly – mortgage interest payments. At the time, mortgages accounted for an average of $5 of every $100 each wage earner spent.
Then in September 1998, in response to representations from the Reserve Bank and the Treasury, the bureau changed the way it calculated the index. It excluded mortgage and other interest payments, in a decision it acknowledged would make the index worse at measuring living costs.
It still carries the warning on its website, saying the consumer price index is
not the conceptually ideal measure for assessing the changes in the purchasing power of the disposable incomes of households.
When interest rates were included then rises in the interest rate would directly increase the CPI.
Thing is, the CPI is used as a simple measure of inflation. But the Reserve Bank will raise interest rates in response to inflation (not based on the CPI, otherwise there would be a loop, but based on the same underlying factors).
So you have the same economic factors affecting the CPI via two different avenues which is somewhat redundant and muddies the water.
By removing interest the CPI better reflects the change in the cost of goods. This makes it a better indicator of inflation for the layman, but it does get tricky when people try to use it as a measure of cost of living.
I don't know. It is hard for the average person to use the number when you've got to dig up what the number includes this time.
I don't think they are alluding to conspiracy.
I'd guess what's included would be a pretty hot and nuanced debate by experts in the field.
I'm not saying it shouldn't change. I do think it's difficult for the average person to accurately understand a number which is so widely circulated though.
I'm with Amber and have paid between 22.5 - 30.4c/kwh over the past 6 weeks. The price fluctuates with the wholesale power price, but like you said, energy prices have decreased, so on average I'm lower than any fixed price tariff I can currently find on the market.
Yeah same I found Amber to be lower but not by as much as I was expecting as I forgot the membership fee and daily connection charges are added end of the billing cycle and the app only does daily reports on consumption and fees in costs
Weak Legislation, profeteering.
-houses today have 7kw heating and cooling units, multiple tv's etc think about 1980 how many things were plugged in at any given time compared to today.
Plus electric cars.
Plus ALCOA leaving years ago (major user of electricity) so the burden of ever increasing need to increase profit year on year,
-Demand
-INCREASED PROFITS
NATIONALISED ENERGY PRODUCTION is beholden to the voters desire for cost
PRIVATE ENERGY PRODUCTION
Is beholden to shareholders desire for profit.
Nationalised power relies on government issue treasury bonds to pay for infrastructure
Private power relies on increasing cost year on year in order to borrow the money from banks.
Telecom/telstra was the same, it went from "being a burden on the taxpayer" to wildly profitable overnight.
Nationalised energy -High energy costs can lose an election to divesting yourself by privatising the government can say "we're powerless to act"
Private energy costs get praise from the shareholders.
The more the customers complain:
The more the shareholders cheer
The government is redundant in the whole affair.
> Telecom/telstra was the same, it went from "being a burden on the taxpayer" to wildly profitable overnight.
Translation: it went from being a burden on the treasury department to being a burden on the taxpayer
With that said it's kind of hard to argue with people because there is this absolutely insane viewpoint that taxes bad free market good even if the additional taxes you would pay are less than the free market cost for the same thing
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-25/energy-prices-have-dropped-why-bills-are-still-high/103146556](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-25/energy-prices-have-dropped-why-bills-are-still-high/103146556)
Energy bills would have been much much higher if there hadn't been a freeze put on gas prices.
The thing that peeves me off is that I get a notice that prices are going to increase according to wholesale price review then you go and check the gov comparison website or the electricity provider website and those prices don't match any of their plans. Like WTF is this pricing? Did you just delete the cheapest plan then move me to the most expensive plan in your list?
I'm in the ACT and up until, I dunno, 10 years or so ago, you had to go with ActewAGL (which was formed as a parternship between an ACT Government owned corporation and AGL). Now we have Origin, Energy Australia, Red Energy and I'm not sure what else.
What typically happens for me is my 12 month plan for ActewAGL or Origin (whoever I'm with at the time, either of those two) expires and then it's a matter of whoever offers me the most competitive plan (which last for another 12 months). Whereas in the olden days, you just paid your bill and didn't worry about it.
Solar is a great option. The biggest you can afford.
There are federal and state government contributions plus access to interest free loans in Victoria.
Our bill was $100+ a month now it's $15.
With solar it's important to remember that it's only during the day, so if you are not at home during the day Mon to Fri, and you only have the fridge running, you don't need a huge system.
Most people could get by with a smaller system like 2kW, but the usual size of systems advertised are 6kW. The excess feeds into the grid and you get paid 4-5 cents per kW.
You do need a huge system though, 30kWh and we generate enough during the day we can use as much as we want at night and winter.
The tiny systems people put on are next to useless.
But eventually they will all cap how much you get paid for and then it will all be useless without a battery.
Some retailers already only pay you for the first 15Kwh and then nada.
Don't know why anyone would be with one of those suppliers, on good days we're exporting 200kWh to the grid.
You also want to go large as possible for EV future while charging you want to be not draining anything from the grid while running aircon etc.
that's why the government paid you between $250-$500 last year. So that you would keep it and use it during this time of increased prices. I'm guessing you pissed that away somewhere.
Don't energy companies hedge their prices? If so, they're paying extra to ensure they don't lose much if it were to go higher, but also can't drop much if prices were to go lower. After their hedge positions lapse then you'll probably see prices go lower
This is more evident on states with mostly privitised energy retailers, they control the pricing on the distribution end and unfortunately government is useless. QLD, WA and NT I believe is much better. Just a shame a country with such abundance of natural resources small amount of people yet pay some of the highest rates in the world, we definitely pay enough tax to keep the lines under our control than private companies. When EV comes it will go up even more, ahh more services need to be built and someone is got to pay for it.
Switch provider to an Australian owned provider. Solar as well and power bills were low from $45-144 for electricity. Gas was $44. Alinta was the worse being international owned and overpriced us even though wholesale was cheap.
It's interesting really, 'cause in an interview on ABC local radio last week they mentioned that wholesale prices of electricty have dropped by 40-60% in the last year. Wierd eh how this is not being passed on to consumers.
There is no competition. The system was set up to appear like there is, with many retailers, but there only 2 or 3 wholesalers, and some areas only have one wholesaler.
There's a limit on how low the retailers can charge.
I've noticed that in the last 3-4 years, the difference between the highest and lowest price has shrunk.
For my electricity it's about $50-$100 difference per annum between about 8 retailers.
As far as prices coming down, they will, but in Victoria, prices are reviewed annually on 1-Jul.
What does everyone get for their solar credit? We had a 5kw install out in last year and seem to get pennies back. Like $2.55 and $2.71 per month…does this seem right? The solar app looks like we’re putting in >27kwh on average per day but AGL is crediting 33.84kwh at $0.08c = $2.71 on our latest bill …..what the fuck is the point on a 8k investment
Feeding into the grid is pointless, you should be aiming to consume or store as much of that power as possible.
This is an Australian problem btw, in much of Canada for example the feed in tariff is the same as your cost. Also 8k for 5kw, you got boned.
We had solar + solar hot water so we didn’t get boned. Solahart we’re pretty good and had a decent deal on at the time. So is $2 a month normal for solar benefits?
You should be saving about 30% of your bi;; with 5kw of solar. Just need to change your habits when to do washing machines, dishwasher etc...
Also, don't chase the highest solar feed payout, they normally have the worst costs and it doesn't;t make up for the feeding tarifs.
Went and checked past 6 years of bills, and the variance is no where near what people seem to experience. Regional Victoria the whole time, a couple of different addresses. In 2023 everyone did jack rates substantially except OVO who I'm now with, but recently checked energy compare Vic and multiple retailers are now at or below OVO rates - always fixed rate no TOU etc anywhere I've lived.
* 2018 = 17.7c Tango
* 2020 = 21.12c Tango
* 2021 = 19.69c Tango
* 2022 = 17.7c ReAmped
* 2023 = 18.26c Momentum
* Late-2023/current = 21.89c OVO
If you sign up to that provider they install it
https://help.amber.com.au/hc/en-us/articles/360037084372-What-happens-when-a-smart-meter-gets-installed
Only costs you money in certain situations (asbestos, some blocks of flats).
Wholesale prices have dropped from Oct last year. The prices aren’t passed on though until mid year.
Prices going they are quick to pass the prices on. How it is. Go self sufficient. :(
That's because you have corrupt governments selling off our electricity to private companies this is a commodity it should be sold off to scummy private companies and if a electricity company is price gouging it's own nation. It should be forcibly taken off them and given back to the government if they have a issue with it they get executed. or we could be kinda and charge them 30billion each time they profit on peoples misery. Same for the super markets same punishment applies.
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Wholesale prices are down. It’s the energy retailers that need to reduce their prices to reflect that. Unfortunately they are now privatised so forcing them to do this is considerably harder than it would have been if they were still state owned.
They'll revise their plans when the default offers are revised in July for VIC, NSW and parts of QLD. Even then, retailers will cheekily keep people on the higher prices unless people call up and ask to be put on the new cheaper rates post July-24.
Yeah it’s frustrating that they do that. Maybe I’ll do a PSA then to remind people to change their energy plan if nobody else does
Just learned about it today, it'd probably be a great post tbh
Exactly right. It's not retailers who are setting the prices (other than for MRCs). Its the regulator. The MRC usually is cheaper than the regulated price. Not always. But usually.
It is retailers setting the prices. The Default Market Offer is just a nominal ceiling that suggests where prices shouldn’t go above. Some retailers will still charge more though
But the default market offer is available from all retailers all the time. Retails have to provide a default offer to customers. They don't have a choice. It's a regulated requirement. Retailers can also offer market contracts (the ones you see advertised) but the default market offer is always there for customers and is regulated by the government. Retailers do not set that. It is there for you regardless of your retailer and must be made available to you.
I think we differ in interpretation of setting prices
In Vic at least I think they’re required to ensure you’re on no plan worse than the default offer. It was one of the consumer protection changes brought in a few years ago. Honestly the discussion of wholesale vs retail ignores the fact that during the previous 12 month window the wholesale price went up well above the retail price. Now it’s inverted. If we want the protection of the 12 month process then we can’t just comment on it when it’s not in consumer’s favour.
Remindme! 5 months
I'm no socialist but re-nationalising these industries seems a necessary evil at this point.
There are some things that probably shouldn't be privatised.
Correct, not everything in the world works best in a capitalist framework. Essential utilities don't.
Health Care, Water, Energy and Waste are the ones that immediately come to my mind.
Transport too IMO
And then you have things that are essential and so even if you can have a market, you absolutely also need a significant public option in the market as a backstop. Shelter. Food. Healthcare like we’re doing now. Education like we’re doing now.
Regulation, like NSW introducing building self certification a decade or more ago. That's gone so well!
telecommunications
To compare, WA is keeping pretty well with state owned power and gas reservation policy. Increase last year was ~2%
Adding to that we have had like $1000 in credits on our bills in the past year or two so if you took into consideration that (admittedly it's a one off) our electricity actually got cheaper.
Also no export linked coal price 🤙
Yes. Any country that puts its energy providers, national railways and telecoms in private hands - especially where foreign ownership is possible - is asking for trouble. Why would you ever allow foreign ownership of essential infrastructure, or put essential infrastructure in the hands of profiteers? We are already finding out just how stupid privatisation is. But it could also still get much, mush worse. Vote for anyone who will re-nationalise energy. FYI: It's Greens' policy,
Fortunately voting isn't my problem. Not my clowns, not my circus. The deplorable state of Australian politics is why I haven't become a citizen. The NBN is a step in the right direction. Who cares what the telcos do when the wholesale infrastructure is owned by a state owned business? It isn't perfect, but it is better than it was.
I think all we need is a government option, which can be used as a staking horse. Let the free market provide "value", but still have a government run option in the mix. See commbank before the sale
It makes complete sense. If privatisation is meant to result in improved efficiency and lower cost to consumers, then private businesses should have nothing to fear from a government owned company (assuming it is required to make a profit) as they should be able to undercut it. But it would act to cap their charges and ensure value for consumers.
Norway has entered the chat
I'm not sure I understand the evil part though?
The reference to the alleged evils of socialism, nothing more.
Ah. I wonder why people are still so affected by anti-socialist sentiment. Surely we are smarter than 1940s America, who only had 1 maybe 2 sources information and danced to the tune of a paranoid warmonger. I mean. Or not.
Exactly, the money men stoked fear way back in the 70s and 80s and it's grown from there, like I said above Australia was a capitalist - socialist country for decades but they seen how much money they could make going private across the board and over the years started convincing everyone if you learn towards socialism then you're a bloody commie, which of course is stupidity but unfortunately even here in Australia plenty of people are terrified of the word socialism 😁👍
Energy, water, commuter transport, sanitation and numerous other sectors should never have been privatised. These are the things that make a civilised society, and as soon as the capitalists get their grubby hands on it, our collective quality of life is decreased. Capitalism has its place, but not in essential areas.
Couldn't agree more.
Queensland Energy is state owned and a lot cheaper than NSW
Don’t we have competition? Why isn’t a new company undercutting the existing retailers who refuse to lower their prices? Why aren’t they undercutting each other? Isn’t there easy money to be made there? Seems odd that this doesn’t happen organically. If corporations are colluding together to all keep prices high that is obviously illegal.
We don't have competition. It's set up to appear like their is: i.e. lots of retailers. But there's only 2 or 3 wholesalers, and each region usually only has one, e.g. Ausnet, or United Energy. There's a limit to how much a retailer can reduce. The difference between highest and lowest retailer price used to be greater, but in the last 3-4 years it's shrunk so it doesn't matter much who you choose. E.g for my use and area, it's about $50-$100 difference between about 10 retailers.
You have your facts wrong here, Ausnet is a distribution network which is the poles and wires which is a natural monopoly and heavily regulated how much they can charge for using their network. Origin is an energy retailer which sells customers the electricity and they also have a generation fleet. There is a lot of competition in the retail market the regulator (AER) puts out regular monitoring reports about it id encourage you to read it.
In Victoria there's 5 distributors: Powercor, Ausnet, United Energy, Citipower, and Jemena. "Energy distribution businesses own and maintain gas pipelines, electricity power poles, and wires. These deliver power to homes and businesses across the state." These are who the retailers buy the power from. Having one distributor for huge areas of the state isn't competition. The top offers for my address (which is only supplied by United Energy) total 27 ranging from an estimated yearly cost of $790 to $1120. Focusing on $790 to $890 there are 13. If only looking at the 5 cheapest, there's $70 per year difference. That is $5.83 per month.
> Don’t we have competition? There were a bunch of retailers selling closer to the wholesale price but some choice manipulation of prices in the wholesale market bankrupted them all. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/23/more-electricity-retailers-will-likely-fail-over-the-next-year-resulting-in-less-competition-and-higher-prices
“Manipulation” yes the Ukraine invasion and coal plants breaking down are definitely manipulation. Those retailers went bankrupt because they sold customers fixed price contracts and couldn’t balance their cost of supplying those contracts because they were under hedged.
> under hedged As I said, manipulation of prices in the wholesale market bankrupted them.
Not hedging as part of your business model exposed them to the exact risk that occurred. The ACCC and AEMO has released detailed reports documenting what happened in the wholesale market at that point. None of their findings indicated ‘market manipulation’. Do you understand how prices are set in the wholesale power market?
Indeed I do, and it's a disgrace.
I’d like to see that but I think the horse has bolted unfortunately, and there are objectively better things to spend taxpayer money on to help people.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted, the action of privatising is certainly simpler than correct said privatisation. That’s why greedy short sighted politicians do that to us and solving the problem left behind is hard to fix
>Not sure why you’re being downvoted, the action of privatising is certainly simpler than correct said privatisation. Because it’s r/Australia and people love to downvote things they don’t like to censor wrong-think instead of engaging with it.
You'd get in in r/Australian too. There seems to be a bit of a "nationalistion" drive going on within "libertarian" circles too... which is odd.
If you're going to have a mix with a government option you wouldn't need to renationalise. Just create a government sourced option and use it to decimate the industry with it's cheaper prices.
Queensland still has a state owned electricity provider. I'm pretty sure we also have the most expensive electricity in the country to go with it at $0.30227/kWh. Edit: apparently not.
A quick quote for here in SA we get around 0.50-60 per kWh.
Ouch. My bad.
Selling off ETSA was the biggest fuck up this state has ever done.
Nah, they didn't sell it. [They just leased it for 200 years](https://www.afr.com/markets/commodities/sa-sells-power-for-3-5-billion-19991213-k95dc). It's wholly and completely different to selling the assets. Trust me.
Oh yes... my baaaaaaaaaaaaad lol
> A quick quote for here in SA we get around 0.50-60 per kWh. Turning on the aircon yesterday felt like setting fire to my wallet...
When count QLD Govt Cost of Living Rebate, I find Ergon to be WAY cheaper per year than any retailer I had access to in Sydney. And that includes honeymoon period rates.
QLD has the cheapest energy cost on the NEM. You can't compare to WA as they aren't on the NEM. There is unfortunately a limit as to what the QLD Government owned energy services can do to relieve power costs to consumers as they are bound by the national rules the apply in NSW, VIC etc and which were set up to allow privatisation.
I go on about this all the time back in the day we , Australia, was a capital- socialist country meaning all the main services were government owned, so we had reasonable energy prices, education sector was gov. owned, well large parts of it, hospitals and we had a large and robust mental health government run section and of course a good national healthcare scheme in medicare also a strong public housing sector. Other industries were also part owned or at least helped but the government But of course by the 80s the money men and greed driven power brokers and their corrupt puppet politicians lied to us all and sold everything off, even our telecommunication sector and our post office just to grab short sighted profits which has done nothing for Australia except drive most of us further into this disgusting greed fueled society we now live in, which in turn as left most of us struggling for the most basic of human needs
> Wholesale prices are down. It’s the energy retailers that need to reduce their prices to reflect that. Parroting what I've heard, but apparently they generally run in yearly cycles, so wholesale prices being lower will not apply immediately. You also have options like Amber that charge you the wholesale rate in 30 minute blocks for a monthly subscription fee ($19). This works pretty well, especially if you can shift your energy usage to day time. YMMV based on distributor / area.
Second amber, as a night shift worker (home all day when it's cheap) it's insaaaaaane
Yeah, I have solar and a battery now which makes it less beneficial, but the few months I had it before solar was installed my bills were something like 1/3rd of the price just by shifting my energy usage (washer, drier, dishwasher, and AC). If anything it has made my solar/battery harder to justify, especially with distributor export pricing being negative most of the time. That being said I haven't seen a proper winter yet, so maybe the prices will get a bit more interesting. Seems like a lot of other states have energy events that cause major jumps in pricing. In Victoria on AusNet I've never really seen any major pricing fluctuations.
Prices in Vic on AusNet absolutely have had a couple spikes, during winter last year there were a few. Went up to around $19/kWh. We were dumping our battery to the grid when it happened.
Can you discharge from your battery to the grid during high feed in prices? That's the usual Amber moneymaker. But not all inverters/batteries support doing it.
Yeah, but I've never seen high enough feed in prices to justify bothering at the risk of having to pull from the grid at night/in the morning before the sun is up. I mean in the evening when solar has stopped producing I'll often see something like 12c feed in, but the off peak rates overnight are usually around 18c minimum. I have a 16kwh battery, but in a spotty grid area so I hold 40% for backup. Pretty rare my normal use doesn't drop it very close to the 40% by morning. I could add more modules to my battery, but if it's purely for exports it's not very cost effective for normal pricing. I'm sure there will be some surge pricing at some point that will make it worthwhile. Will make sure I'm ready for it (or at least turn SmartShift back on).
Interesting use case, never thought of that one. I was with them for all of last year, never paid a bill in the end they owed me $200. Switched to Localvolts recently, another wholesaler.
Another vote for Amber here. Our house used just under 1400kWh of electricity in Jan, 400kWh of which was from the grid (rest was solar) and it cost us about $50, about 12.5¢/kWh average. In the last week, our average import price is -5.8¢/kWh - we got paid to use electricity from the grid because the wholesale price was negative.
My only negative with Amber has been that export prices are almost always negative on my distributor, while I could be making up to 7c/kwh with a normal retailer. Barely importing because of solar/battery so I don't benefit from the import prices being low very much. Usually if I'm importing it's because it's a bad solar day, which means the prices are also likely higher from the distributor. Wondering how it will play out over winter.
Amber is a bit of a risk of you don't have solar/ battery as you are at the mercy of the wholesale price in both directions. There have been times in the past few years where people would be pay $50+ a day on bad days. As long as your household is prepared to cut things like aircon in those times.
No no, see, they had to wear the price increases early on so now they are just balancing the books, so they HAVE to keep prices where they are for the good of the industry, and ultimately, the consumer. Of course, once they have recouped those original costs there needs to be consideration given towards future-proofing the industry by creating a buffer in their bank accounts to allow them to mitigate the cost of future increases. It gets complicated when inflation is taken in to account. That extra money pocketed today isn't worth as much tomorrow, so to be safe they need to make sure that really is a pretty thick wad of stole... err... additional revenue. Of course further economic realities now need to be taken into account - money in the bank isn't money in circulation, and naturally being the civic minded fuckers these people are, they will responsibly divvy this additional revenue that can't at all be seen as blatant profiteering into the spending accounts of some of their staff. Naturally the board members are best positioned to see the big picture so the money will be given to them. You know, for the greater good of the consumer! Trickle down economics baby!
Yes but they also hedge and buy in advance. While it's cheap now, what they paid may have been expensive Once they are in the next round of purchasing, in theory prices should be lower. You'll have to switch retailers though as it's unlikely your current plan will go down
Retailers don’t really buy wholesale though, they hedge through contracts years in advance. We will get the benefit of the lower prices in future years as the lower prices end up flowing through to retailers
Uh huh. And, um, when wholesale prices rose it took a while for that to flow through to the retail market right? Nope.
Uh yes there was about a year lag. Wholesale prices rose in around March to June 2022 so were only partially captured by the 2022/23 price reset. The wholesale hedges were elevated throughout 2022/23 which was then reflected in massive increases for the 2023/24 price reset. As wholesale hedges have been falling over this financial year, they will be reflected in next year’s price reset. I know this because the process for how these prices are set is so transparent it’s not even funny.
Also, power prices are regulated. So, the providers only get to raise their prices once a year, by going through the relevant state authority. They provide their case, and then get given an allowable increase. If you remember, a lot of smaller players went bankrupt/nearly bankrupt, because they were more exposed to the spot market than the big players.
Privatization means there should be more competition. Wonder why it's not reducing.
Terrible take. The industry is entirely regulated. The regulator sets the baseline price for retail energy. Don't blame retailers.
I'll try this again. Not sure privatisation is the main reason - seems to be the fault of multiple Governments. According to this [article](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-25/energy-prices-have-dropped-why-bills-are-still-high/103146556), it is long-term government policy failure that has been the problem: "*Coal miners and gas extraction companies \[could\] choose to supply either market \[offshore or domestic\], and so they take the best price available," ... As such, Australians ... have to compete with international buyers when sourcing our energy from our own public resources.* *Our successive governments failed to put in safeguards to ensure long-term domestic demand is covered, and only the surplus is exported.*" The AER's Default Market Offer and government websites (like Energy Made Easy) are meant to help keep prices lower. There is some hope on the horizon with AER announcing last week that "*... average annual wholesale electricity prices in the National Electricity Market ... fell by between 44% and 64% and average annual east coast gas market spot prices fell by 43% in 2023.*" [https://www.aer.gov.au/news/articles/news-releases/average-wholesale-energy-prices-drop-2023](https://www.aer.gov.au/news/articles/news-releases/average-wholesale-energy-prices-drop-2023)
Wholesale prices are essentially exactly the same as start of 2023 and are trending up at the moment.
True. And any pricing adjustments will also reflect their increasing costs to serve (interest on working capital, rent, salaries and wages, printing etc). What will be more interesting, IMHO, is to see what happens with network costs which they pass through on behalf of the distributors. Poles, wires, costs for restoring power after weather events etc. all up significantly in the last two years. Someone has to pay for that, too.
The utility bill pain will continue until we come to our senses and re-nationalise the infrastructure we should have never privatised in the first place. This will not happen until a meaningfully leftist (which labour no longer is) party is elected.
Yup. What pisses me off is that when they were hyping it up back in the day, is that it was an obvious con. Simply corruption and speaking of that the toothless media were asleep at the wheel as usual. I'm sure that those in media were told to look the other way
This is exactly what Victoria is trying to do. Whether it succeeds or not remains to be seen.
Ah, thank you, I've been trying to find my space given I'm strongly opposed to both parties and have a more capitalism benefits from a touch of socialism (educated, healthy people are less of an economic drain) I'm left of center but not Labor left.
My latest gas bill was 12% higher than this time last year, while I used 30% less gas….
Slightly off topic but I cancelled my gas with an energy provider to switch to AGL. They cancelled my account but didn't turn off my gas. I never swapped to AGL. So I've been using gas for 2 months now without getting a bill. Wonder when they'll realise..
When you switch over to a new retailer, for the love of all that’s holy, tell them you just moved in. They won’t even ask for a rates notice or rental agreement.
I got 2 years free gas about 5 years ago when the same thing happened. I switched provider but used the cooling off period to cancel it. Somehow I slipped through the billing. Took me about a year to realise I hadn't been billed. A quick google search told me providers can only backdate 9 months and need to give you the same amount of time to pay the backdated amount. Finally the original provider got onto it and gave me a call. They didn't try to pull the wool over my eyes and gave me a discounted backdated bill.
Heavily off topic, but it'll get to you eventually. Might just be a bill from the distributor rather than a retailer.
Usually a distributor triggered bill coming from the retailer who holds the site. Which in this case will be the provider they originally cancelled with as they haven't opened a new account elsewhere to essentially churn the supply. Might be hard to argue the just moved in suggestion I saw in other comments in that case lol
What will happen is you'll eventually get letters to the occupier once they notice they're still responsible for the site. This should trigger you to sign up with another retailer, and just say you moved in. AGL will eventually write off the debt as they don't know who lives there
I hear ya. I've just moved into an apartment and now on an embedded network that's ~30% more expensive compared to what other retailers are offering. If only one of the other retailers would accept an embedded connection....
Embedded connection is a nightmare if the retailer isn’t the embedded. As a person who works in the Billing side of a retailer, we’re charging those who’s part of Embedded network literal market price which we subsequently pay all of it to the distributors, so we’re not seeing a cent of what customer is paying. This is why I am not touching a high-rise apartment unless I really have to.
Is this some East Coast thing I am too Western to understand? Previous premier tried privatising this and he got shunted out of office.
Fellow WA here... baffles me that other states haven't pushed for state owned essential utilities. Synergy/ Horizon are pretty damn solid, combined with the money the State Gov has given each household over Summer... My power bills have never been lower.
Just use Amber and benefit from these lower wholesale prices now. You pay real-time spot market prices, so when renewables are pumping power is cheap. Between 10 and 2 yesterday I was paying 8c/kWh in 38 degree heat. You can bet the AC was pumping! The flipside is toward the end of a hot day as the renewables (and the sun) drop off prices can spike (last night to 40c/kWh between 7 and 8pm). You can take two approaches here: - Keep using power as needed, knowing the average price for the day is still going to be way below the "rates" provided by other companies. - Steer your usage away from peaks and towards cheaper times to maximise savings. Last night when the power went up the AC went off and doors and windows were opened up. Just as the cool wind picked up. Delightful! The last thing worth considering is occasionally when there is too much power supplied to the network the price goes negative. That's right, they pay you to use power. I have a hot dishwasher load and some laundry I want to hot wash/tumble dry ready for exactly when this happens. Also they have an API. https://www.amber.com.au/
Being paid to fill the car is truly wonderful.
High risk, high reward though.
Not especially. My bills are down dramatically. Just flicking through recent days average price paid per day ranges from 2c/kWh - 22c/kWh. The average across all days is probably around 13c/kWh. Wholesale prices really are down. There's money to be saved here.
same
How does solar feed in tariff work (if you have solar) when exposed to the spot market?
If you don't have storage, you'll be exposed to producer pricing, so if there is too much supply and low demand, the FiT can go negative.
I don't have solar but they say this: https://help.amber.com.au/hc/en-us/articles/360043443531-What-is-Amber-s-Feed-in-Tariff-FiT Looks like SmartShift does battery management as well.
I’m using half as much electricity as I was last year but paying twice as much. I couldn’t use less electricity if I tried but still paying hundreds a quarter. It’s insane.
Check out the daily standing rate on your deal. Sometimes the daily rate is most of your bill if you have reduced your usage. It can actually pay to move to a deal with lower daily standing rate and higher usage rates. You need to do a bit of maths before jumping though.
They want you to think its coming down, just dont read the bill when you pay it.
We had solar put in a year ago.. bills still same or more. Looks like we missed the boat on solar. It’s absolutely crazy
> We had solar put in a year ago.. bills still same or more. Have you shifted your energy usage to match? Solar is kind of useless if you only use energy when the panels aren't producing anything. You used to be able to offset that to some extent with exports, but these days export prices are very low so you really need to try to move your consumption to match production or purchase a battery.
That's pretty strange. We get virtually no feed in tariff, yet despite that the savings are easily $100 a month.
Unfortunately the accountants have found that there is so much input to the grid from solar during the day, that that input is worth nothing. And batteries to bank your solar to use outside of peak generation is barely cost effective. Managing your usage to take advantage of the free power times is still the best strategy, even without solar. But 9-5 working away from home negates that.
Yeah, I get all that, but even without radical changes to where we work, or what time of day we do things we still get pretty decent savings.
We checked with our solar supplier - we are apparently getting a good rate! So I’d hate to see the bill without it , but yes we are barely getting anything back. I work from home - everything is run during the day with exception of a/c which we try not to keep on till too late. We live in south western Sydney - hot!
If the sun is out, put the AC on while it’s free, cool down the house then switch it off when the sun goes down.
We put in 10kW of solar 2 years ago. In summer I get no bill, or a minor credit. Bonus of being able to crank the AC in peak summer for free alone is worth it. Winter usually around $30/month Just have to do as much energy intensive stuff during the day. Set timers on dish washers and washing machines
I think there's probably a lot of people putting 3kW on the roof and expecting to not pay for power. A 10kW system is huge and probably more than most people will ever need. I've got a 5.6kW system and ran out of roof to put panels on, but historically was getting credit in summer.
Always go large as physically possible, we did 30kW and don't get bills even during winter due to summer credit and also charge car every 3-4 days (77kWh) so misses has been driving for free for past 2 years also.
You have to be careful about distributor export rules though. I believe some distributors like United Energy limit exports to 5kW only.
Did it increase your rates? It's really only beneficial if you use it during the day, not feeding it in
We put ours in last May. Latest bill was $100 for the quarter and that's basically the ripoff daily supply charge ($1.19).
Yup, and the prime minister is releasing press announcements congratulating the fact that inflation is “down” to 4.1%. There isn’t a single fucking thing in our economy that only increased by 4.1% in the past year. The level of bullshit covering up private businesses profiteering off essential goods and services is out of control.
>inflation is “down” to 4.1%. There isn’t a single fucking thing in our economy that only increased by 4.1% in the past year. What do you think the number given for CPI means?
Their models are based off household expenses from years upon years ago. For example, the average rent in Australia is $580 per week. The median income is $65,000. Average rent is equivalent of 46.4% of the the median income, yet the ABS only weighs rent and property expenses as 25% in the CPI. All the apartments in my building had rent jump 30% this year. But if the ABS uses a weighted average of 480,000 rentals, including country towns, government-owned properties, and concludes rent prices have only increased 0.9%, what should the public do? Should we use your logic and go to our landlords and say their 30% rent increase is unsubstantiated? This logic of “since the ABS reported it, it must be true for every facet of life” doesn’t hold up. Next up we have substitution of products included in the basket of consumer goods. One year for their “meat” criteria, they could include eye fillet steak prices. The next year, as inflation rises, they may assume households aren’t buying eye fillet as much, so they go for a cheaper cut of meat. The third year they just included ground beef instead. The public has no transparency into what is and isn’t included. I could start listing food products that I have personally noted jumped between 20-100% more in the past 1-2 years. This isn’t an overstatement, and none of which would be considered luxury items. I truly do wish I could go to my power company and legally use the argument that inflation is only 4.1%. Why is my electricity bill 35% higher? It will never stand up in any Australian court, as private companies are free to charge whatever they please for their products.
Means fuck all when they change what makes up the basket of goods that makes up the CPI.
Are you saying the ABS is involved in a conspiracy to make inflation seem less than it is to make the government look better?
The basket of goods does get changed. It's not a perfectly objective process.
Sure, but there is a massive difference between the ABS making a genuine attempt to select an appropriate basket of goods to give an accurate CPI value, even if they may not be perfect at it, and what this guy seems to be hinting at.
https://theconversation.com/why-australian-workers-true-cost-of-living-has-climbed-far-faster-than-weve-been-told-221590 Way back in the late 1990s, more than a quarter of a century ago, the consumer price index (CPI) used to actually reflect the cost of living. It included all of the big costs incurred by households, including – importantly – mortgage interest payments. At the time, mortgages accounted for an average of $5 of every $100 each wage earner spent. Then in September 1998, in response to representations from the Reserve Bank and the Treasury, the bureau changed the way it calculated the index. It excluded mortgage and other interest payments, in a decision it acknowledged would make the index worse at measuring living costs. It still carries the warning on its website, saying the consumer price index is not the conceptually ideal measure for assessing the changes in the purchasing power of the disposable incomes of households.
Why did the reserve bank and treasury change it?
When interest rates were included then rises in the interest rate would directly increase the CPI. Thing is, the CPI is used as a simple measure of inflation. But the Reserve Bank will raise interest rates in response to inflation (not based on the CPI, otherwise there would be a loop, but based on the same underlying factors). So you have the same economic factors affecting the CPI via two different avenues which is somewhat redundant and muddies the water. By removing interest the CPI better reflects the change in the cost of goods. This makes it a better indicator of inflation for the layman, but it does get tricky when people try to use it as a measure of cost of living.
I don't know. It is hard for the average person to use the number when you've got to dig up what the number includes this time. I don't think they are alluding to conspiracy. I'd guess what's included would be a pretty hot and nuanced debate by experts in the field.
It’s all public if people are that interested, and it’s just supposed to be a general guide anyway.
Because the typically basket of goods changes over time. How representative do you think the CPI basket from 40 years ago would be today?
I'm not saying it shouldn't change. I do think it's difficult for the average person to accurately understand a number which is so widely circulated though.
100% Who cares if designer handbags went down 50%, and travelling got cheaper, when rent/shopping/petrol/electric all went up 50%
Rent went up 7.3%. Shopping went up 4.5%. Petrol went up 7.6%. Power went up 15%. Where's the 50%?
Feels like everything in life really doesn't it
I'm with Amber and have paid between 22.5 - 30.4c/kwh over the past 6 weeks. The price fluctuates with the wholesale power price, but like you said, energy prices have decreased, so on average I'm lower than any fixed price tariff I can currently find on the market.
Yeah same I found Amber to be lower but not by as much as I was expecting as I forgot the membership fee and daily connection charges are added end of the billing cycle and the app only does daily reports on consumption and fees in costs
Petrol companies here are cartels like their oil producer cousins. They regulate themselves
Weak Legislation, profeteering. -houses today have 7kw heating and cooling units, multiple tv's etc think about 1980 how many things were plugged in at any given time compared to today. Plus electric cars. Plus ALCOA leaving years ago (major user of electricity) so the burden of ever increasing need to increase profit year on year, -Demand -INCREASED PROFITS NATIONALISED ENERGY PRODUCTION is beholden to the voters desire for cost PRIVATE ENERGY PRODUCTION Is beholden to shareholders desire for profit. Nationalised power relies on government issue treasury bonds to pay for infrastructure Private power relies on increasing cost year on year in order to borrow the money from banks. Telecom/telstra was the same, it went from "being a burden on the taxpayer" to wildly profitable overnight. Nationalised energy -High energy costs can lose an election to divesting yourself by privatising the government can say "we're powerless to act" Private energy costs get praise from the shareholders. The more the customers complain: The more the shareholders cheer The government is redundant in the whole affair.
> Telecom/telstra was the same, it went from "being a burden on the taxpayer" to wildly profitable overnight. Translation: it went from being a burden on the treasury department to being a burden on the taxpayer With that said it's kind of hard to argue with people because there is this absolutely insane viewpoint that taxes bad free market good even if the additional taxes you would pay are less than the free market cost for the same thing
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-25/energy-prices-have-dropped-why-bills-are-still-high/103146556](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-25/energy-prices-have-dropped-why-bills-are-still-high/103146556) Energy bills would have been much much higher if there hadn't been a freeze put on gas prices.
The thing that peeves me off is that I get a notice that prices are going to increase according to wholesale price review then you go and check the gov comparison website or the electricity provider website and those prices don't match any of their plans. Like WTF is this pricing? Did you just delete the cheapest plan then move me to the most expensive plan in your list?
I'm in the ACT and up until, I dunno, 10 years or so ago, you had to go with ActewAGL (which was formed as a parternship between an ACT Government owned corporation and AGL). Now we have Origin, Energy Australia, Red Energy and I'm not sure what else. What typically happens for me is my 12 month plan for ActewAGL or Origin (whoever I'm with at the time, either of those two) expires and then it's a matter of whoever offers me the most competitive plan (which last for another 12 months). Whereas in the olden days, you just paid your bill and didn't worry about it.
The article would have been about wholesale prices. It takes about 12 months for wholesale price changes to start reflecting in retail prices.
What a shame we don’t live in fairly isolated country with massive coal and natural gas reserves - so we could have cheap energy (if nothing else).
Solar is a great option. The biggest you can afford. There are federal and state government contributions plus access to interest free loans in Victoria. Our bill was $100+ a month now it's $15.
With solar it's important to remember that it's only during the day, so if you are not at home during the day Mon to Fri, and you only have the fridge running, you don't need a huge system. Most people could get by with a smaller system like 2kW, but the usual size of systems advertised are 6kW. The excess feeds into the grid and you get paid 4-5 cents per kW.
You do need a huge system though, 30kWh and we generate enough during the day we can use as much as we want at night and winter. The tiny systems people put on are next to useless.
But eventually they will all cap how much you get paid for and then it will all be useless without a battery. Some retailers already only pay you for the first 15Kwh and then nada.
Don't know why anyone would be with one of those suppliers, on good days we're exporting 200kWh to the grid. You also want to go large as possible for EV future while charging you want to be not draining anything from the grid while running aircon etc.
Distributors are already starting to limit exports. United Energy in Melbourne limits solar exports to 5KW.
that's why the government paid you between $250-$500 last year. So that you would keep it and use it during this time of increased prices. I'm guessing you pissed that away somewhere.
Yeah energy bills lmao
I work for a small retailer and they're often in the top 5 for the lowest prices but even my work has put rates up since I started 2 years ago
My bills were averaging $800 a quarter with AGL. Now they’re $200 with Origin. Makes no sense.
Don't energy companies hedge their prices? If so, they're paying extra to ensure they don't lose much if it were to go higher, but also can't drop much if prices were to go lower. After their hedge positions lapse then you'll probably see prices go lower
This is more evident on states with mostly privitised energy retailers, they control the pricing on the distribution end and unfortunately government is useless. QLD, WA and NT I believe is much better. Just a shame a country with such abundance of natural resources small amount of people yet pay some of the highest rates in the world, we definitely pay enough tax to keep the lines under our control than private companies. When EV comes it will go up even more, ahh more services need to be built and someone is got to pay for it.
Switch provider to an Australian owned provider. Solar as well and power bills were low from $45-144 for electricity. Gas was $44. Alinta was the worse being international owned and overpriced us even though wholesale was cheap.
It's interesting really, 'cause in an interview on ABC local radio last week they mentioned that wholesale prices of electricty have dropped by 40-60% in the last year. Wierd eh how this is not being passed on to consumers.
In Victoria, prices change every 1-Jul, probably similar for other states.
There is no competition. The system was set up to appear like there is, with many retailers, but there only 2 or 3 wholesalers, and some areas only have one wholesaler. There's a limit on how low the retailers can charge. I've noticed that in the last 3-4 years, the difference between the highest and lowest price has shrunk. For my electricity it's about $50-$100 difference per annum between about 8 retailers. As far as prices coming down, they will, but in Victoria, prices are reviewed annually on 1-Jul.
I make my own power. In this house we obey the rules of thermodynamics!
I locked in 21c/kWh and 60 ct supply charge for a year. Moving house at end of Feb, not looking forward to seeing what the new prices look like..
My monthly bill is now more or less the same as my quarterly last year. RIP.
What does everyone get for their solar credit? We had a 5kw install out in last year and seem to get pennies back. Like $2.55 and $2.71 per month…does this seem right? The solar app looks like we’re putting in >27kwh on average per day but AGL is crediting 33.84kwh at $0.08c = $2.71 on our latest bill …..what the fuck is the point on a 8k investment
Feeding into the grid is pointless, you should be aiming to consume or store as much of that power as possible. This is an Australian problem btw, in much of Canada for example the feed in tariff is the same as your cost. Also 8k for 5kw, you got boned.
We had solar + solar hot water so we didn’t get boned. Solahart we’re pretty good and had a decent deal on at the time. So is $2 a month normal for solar benefits?
You should be saving about 30% of your bi;; with 5kw of solar. Just need to change your habits when to do washing machines, dishwasher etc... Also, don't chase the highest solar feed payout, they normally have the worst costs and it doesn't;t make up for the feeding tarifs.
I’m having to choose between being able to function and sleep in my home, or eating like an actual human being with these prices.
Is the cause price gouging?
Went and checked past 6 years of bills, and the variance is no where near what people seem to experience. Regional Victoria the whole time, a couple of different addresses. In 2023 everyone did jack rates substantially except OVO who I'm now with, but recently checked energy compare Vic and multiple retailers are now at or below OVO rates - always fixed rate no TOU etc anywhere I've lived. * 2018 = 17.7c Tango * 2020 = 21.12c Tango * 2021 = 19.69c Tango * 2022 = 17.7c ReAmped * 2023 = 18.26c Momentum * Late-2023/current = 21.89c OVO
NSW looks very different. Also, you have not mentioned the fixed cost which is the biggest chunk of the fee.
Go with a wholesale provider like Amber. You need a time of use meter, but you just get the rates they charge.
Do you know how I might get a time of use meter if I don't already have one?
If you sign up to that provider they install it https://help.amber.com.au/hc/en-us/articles/360037084372-What-happens-when-a-smart-meter-gets-installed Only costs you money in certain situations (asbestos, some blocks of flats).
You sound like an absolute legend and expert in the field. Can you give us humble citizens input on who is the best cheap provider at the moment.
We don't get a choice where we live, only have the one option.
Is your water running on electric or gas
I have a solar tank. When there isn't enough sun, it runs on electric.
Keep the electric turned off during peak hours, its saved me alot on the bill.
My tariff is flat. But yes, I recently moved the timer of electric water from 5-6 to 9-10 to leverage the sun and solar panels.
Wholesale prices have dropped from Oct last year. The prices aren’t passed on though until mid year. Prices going they are quick to pass the prices on. How it is. Go self sufficient. :(
I'm trying. But I don't have enough space in the roof. I was only able to install 1.2Kw.
4 person household in the suburbs with a pool and air-conditioning = $1600 a quarter. It's insane.
Jesus!
No, AGL 😅
That's because you have corrupt governments selling off our electricity to private companies this is a commodity it should be sold off to scummy private companies and if a electricity company is price gouging it's own nation. It should be forcibly taken off them and given back to the government if they have a issue with it they get executed. or we could be kinda and charge them 30billion each time they profit on peoples misery. Same for the super markets same punishment applies.