Electricity - Just when you thought it couldnt get worse

[Redneck]

Electricity - just when you thought it couldnt get worse

All frigging politicians need a good kick up the arse if this nonsense isnt sorted out in the next few months

Rural businesses switch to diesel power as electricity prices soar
7.30
By regional affairs reporter Lucy Barbour

Updated Thu at 8:23pm


"I'm pissed off and I've had a gutful."

A long, dry summer is enough to frustrate any sugarcane grower, but Allan Dingle's anger is directed at the pile of electricity bills in front of him.

"You start to wonder why you get out of bed in the morning," he said.

Mr Dingle uses electric powered pumps to water his cane fields near Bundaberg, on Queensland's central coast, and the price to run those pumps has more than doubled over the past decade.

The soil here is rich-red and fertile and locals say, if you can add water, you can grow anything.

But as power prices rise, some farmers have been forced to turn off the pumps.

The local irrigators' council representative, Dale Hollis, is hearing that concern right across the district, and the country.

He says right now, irrigators have two options:

"They have to switch off the pumps and go back to dryland [cropping], and that impacts upon the productivity of the region and impacts on jobs," he said.

"The second option is to go off the grid and look at alternatives."

Another option is solar and there are plenty of farmers installing panels, but many growers irrigate at night and can't afford the millions of dollars it could take to buy battery storage.

That's pushing many of them back to a dirtier option.

"Right now, diesel stacks up," Mr Hollis said.

Across the district, black power lines snake above cane fields that rustle in the breeze. But Simon Doyle says they may as well not be there if electricity prices continue to rise.

He's in charge of farm operations at Australia's most famous sugar company, Bundaberg Sugar, which produces 220,000 tonnes of raw sugar every year. Gradually switching to diesel is saving the company some serious coin.

Diesel pumps aren't pretty. One spits out fumes as it whirs into life, but Mr Doyle says it's the only option for his company right now.

    "When you're backed to the wall, you don't have the luxury of thinking about how environmentally friendly diesel is versus electricity," he said.

He's done the maths carefully and it's already 30 per cent cheaper to pump water with diesel than electricity.

"With what we understand electricity prices are going to do into the future, that number will become even greater," he said.

Farmers get a rebate from the Federal Government for diesel fuel, but even without it, Mr Doyle says diesel is still the most cost effective option.

For Mr Dingle, diesel has always been a good backup option, but he's worried about what it would mean to ditch electricity altogether.

He says electricity is "cleaner, more user-friendly, probably more reliable" and worries that abandoning the grid altogether will hurt his neighbours.

"If I went to diesel all I do is put my share of what I was paying before into the electricity prices, onto all my neighbours and their prices increase as well."

Rural businesses right across the country are grappling with the same issues.

Glen Dobinson's father started as a blacksmith in a backyard tin shed in Rockhampton, Queensland, in the early 1950s. Since then the company has grown dramatically; it exports springs and other four-wheel drive parts all over the world and employs more than 40 people.

He and his dad are "proud as punch" of how far they've come and now Glen Dobinson would like to take a step back to let the younger generation over.

But mounting electricity bills are making that difficult.

"Back in 2007, our power bill was about $100,000 to $110,000 year in, year out previous to that," he said.

"Now it's about $350,000 a year."

He's worried his bills could double again by 2020 as Queensland's regional electricity distributor, Ergon, changes the way it charges small businesses for power.

Mr Dobinson says that will mean a new daily service charge of $155,000 per year, and a new demand charge.

"Then we'll have our power bill on top of that," he said.

Like the irrigators in Bundaberg, he is being forced to consider cheaper alternatives like diesel.

"I feel like we're going back to the future," he said.

"My dad had diesel forges and other diesel running here in the old shop on the other side of town.

"I feel like we're going backwards."

Ergon says it's changing its tariffs to become more "cost-reflective", and to encourage consumers not to use as much power during peak periods.

Energy companies have previously said they needed to invest more money because electricity consumption was growing and they believed that would continue.
'Obvious conflict of interest for governments'

For the past eight years, companies said that investment was essential if they were going to meet that rising demand.

But the electricity market is unpredictable, says the Grattan Institute's Tony Wood.

"Electricity consumption had actually been falling for a whole range of reasons. And the question now is, who should pay for that?" Mr Wood said.

While power prices are causing concern across the country, Mr Wood says network prices have risen most sharply in Queensland and New South Wales, where state governments own energy companies.

"Now partly there's an obvious conflict of interest for governments. Do they put downward pressure on prices to help their consumers, or do they try to make money out of the companies they own?" he said.

    "I think that's an unhealthy conflict and I think that's partly behind why we ended up with very high costs in Queensland and NSW."

Energy economist Bruce Mountain sees that conflict as more of a "racket".

He says state governments who still own electricity networks are raking in billions of dollars each from energy companies by using the national electricity market's pricing rules to their advantage.

Those rules mean the prices consumers pay are largely influenced by the value and estimated running costs of the individual electricity companies.

"The main reason why the network charges have risen is because the regulator's valuation of the network has risen, and that more expensive asset base has to be charged for," Mr Mountain said.

"They can reduce prices by revaluing those assets down closer to a market valuation."

Mr Wood says there's nothing wrong with turning a profit, but he points out that the national electricity market was designed so that energy companies, regulators and governments could develop and maintain a system that works in the long-term interests of consumers.

The Queensland Government is providing help for regional businesses affected by increased charges but business owners like Glen Dobinson say it won't help them.

"We don't know where to go. Honestly, it's my biggest bugbear. I want to keep employing local people and making a great product but without the direction and being competitive, I lose a lot of sleep."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-09/r ... ar/8339346

[Outlaw Yogi]

One of my hoped for (but probably never happen) projects is to build a furnace on my block, so I can do my own metal casting.
I always figured I'd have to run it on gas, but if Labor govts and their Greens cheer leaders keep trashing the coal industry, and state govts of all persuasions bung the gas wells, the price of coal will crash as the price of gas explodes so it would be more economic to run my furnace on carbon taxed coal.

My bet is there'll be a run on diesel generators in the very near future for suburbia, they're pretty standard in the bush.
Although I'm led to believe city councils have curfews on generators - 9pm near Newcastle apparently.

[IQS.RLOW]

Electricity - just when you thought it couldnt get worse

All frigging politicians need a good kick up the arse if this nonsense isnt sorted out in the next few months

Are you serious? You're a fucking left voter.
You are a major part of the problem.

You continue to support the side of politics that pushes this Marxist anti western stealth wealth distribution bullshit ideologly to try and install a tax on fucking everything so the left, who could never produce anything productive or wanted by anyone decided that theyll just add a bit of marxist leftism tax to fucking everything.

So any product new or existing created, designed and built by a company has a government mandated non-existent Marxist widget installed.
The Marxists have decided that they deserve to be part owners and financial recipients of the profit structure of every company and product ever sold anywhere in the entire world. Demanding a slice of the profits for doing and contributing absolutely fucking nothing.

So left leaning governments salivating at the potential of the greatest scam to be ever foisted on the human race didn't jump in with both feet. They threw you in head first and send you the bill for doing so.

What sort of fucking idiot implements a system for making efficient energy creation more expensive so inefficenct energy creation can compete?

Your useless unreliable​ and expensive forced additions to a system that was working perfectly, are paid for and subsidized by tax and power prices but somehow you forgot that the amazing unreliable and expensive pieces of shit you added to the network need the original reliable system to underpin them to make them viable.

Sadly, the system was designed by economic Marxists so these new unreliable pieces of shit are very attractive to shills and leeches (leftwing lobbyists)

How could any government not realise thag unreliable government mandated subsidized crap results in a market flooded with unreliable government mandated subsidized crap? Now the crap is crowding out the reliable system that is needed to make the crap viable. So the price for the crap is getting more expensive. Who didn't see that running a diesel genset would not only end up more economical than an energy system fucked with by leftists, it would be more reliable too.

So leftist governments eager to appease their Marxist masters and completely fuck everything up.

You would think that the example of a failed leftist state demonstrating how badly they fucked their energy system would make the other leftists states pause and think maybe something is wrong, but nope. You get the head of the federal leftist side of the benches annouce that it's not good enough that our failed leftist brothers fell apart at 40% govt mandated shit. Let make a national plan for 50% mandated shit!

This is the sort of shit that politicians should be jailed for.
Start with the SA fucking moron who is unable to admit that he's a fucking moron.
A leftist standing waist deep in shit and claims it saves energy because it keeps you warm. So the government forces you to stand in shit to keep warm.
When people start throwing up, they'll claim "it's the right. They don't like us keeping warm so cheaply"
When people start dying from E-coli, they'll claim its completely unrelated
When the hepatitis victims need liver transplants, they'll claim they must be drunks or druggies.
Now get back in your shit pit and don't say nuffink.

Normal logical people could see that not only was this shit a fucking scam for the get go, they also predicted that if it was adopted it would be a huge fuckup.
Yet still the leftist governments,their shills and their idiot fucking dumb arsed supporters keep championing and encouraging them to hold the line, don't give in....

Jeezus fucking Christ. There are some people in this world whose DNA should have died out years ago through natural selection but they're protected from their stupidity by leftist policies when they should be dead.

[Wayne]

My My - How quickly we all forget. The state owned and run electricity generation and distribution networks were running just fine until successive Liberal governments stepped in, split them into generator and distribution entities, sold them off and let the consumers carry the can.

The reason power prices are going through the roof is that generators will sell to the highest payer on the hour and stuff the rest, whilst distributors gold plate their networks and raise prices to match. Generators and Distributors in Vic are now making a 30% profit after the Kennett Liberal Disaster privatised the system years ago and deregulated the market. NSW has gone the same way and is facing ever increasing prices whilst WA have just avoided the same deal by kicking out the incompetent Barnett Government.

[Lucas]

What pisses me off is we are not allowed to use Elon Musks Solar charged Battery Walls in our homes. Our government are criminals and just want to screw people over. Nothing but scumbag dictators only out to line their own pockets.

[Wayne]

What pisses me off is we are not allowed to use Elon Musks Solar charged Battery Walls in our homes. Our government are criminals and just want to screw people over. Nothing but scumbag dictators only out to line their own pockets.

I was looking at a Tesla power wall 2 - but at 15K it is out of my reach at the moment. I have 7.5KW of solar on the roof, but as soon as the mains go off, it's useless. SA Government are considering subsidising people to attach Batteries and that would bring the price down to around $3K. What really pisses me off though is that I pump shit tins of power into the grid each day for 5 cents KW/h - yet AGL on sell that for a lot more! Still, I have paid off the solar in around 3 years - I just need to wait until I can get a 19.5 KW battery attached.

[IQS.RLOW]

My My - How quickly we all forget. The state owned and run electricity generation and distribution networks were running just fine until successive Liberal governments stepped in, split them into generator and distribution entities, sold them off and let the consumers carry the can.

The reason power prices are going through the roof is that generators will sell to the highest payer on the hour and stuff the rest, whilst distributors gold plate their networks and raise prices to match. Generators and Distributors in Vic are now making a 30% profit after the Kennett Liberal Disaster privatised the system years ago and deregulated the market. NSW has gone the same way and is facing ever increasing prices whilst WA have just avoided the same deal by kicking out the incompetent Barnett Government.

You can stow your partisan bullshit Wayne. The problem is caused by all shades of the political spectrum, state and federal.
The privatisation line is just the current propaganda line being spun while bad policy design from all sides of government, mandated interference in the market causing butterfly effects to ripple through the wholesale, retail, generators and distribution.
So what happens when they finally recognise they fucked it up? They just fiddle with more mandated policy to try and fix the other fuck up creating more problem.

The system is so broken, the government needs to remove itself and all the interfering policy introduced and withdraw the ugly hand of governance to allow the market to do what markets do. That is to naturally find balance and correct the problems caused by the introduction of subsidized snake oil that did absolutely nothing to add capability nor capacity to the network. Sadly, this will never happen because vested interests and rent seekers will bowl like banshees.

Prices increases are from many avenues. WA went through some massive rises in the last 6 or so years with no privatisation because the previous governments had frozen the wholesale price at artificially low levels.

If you want to see where the main cause of problems lie, you only have to look at what industry sprung up like a giant weed with regards to power. Masses of new entrants all pushing the same product to household who knew only a little bit less than the companies themselves did about any real world advantages of the crap being sold.

Any industry that springs up relatively overnight with masses of new entrants and backed by government policy settings is a giant red flag waving above it saying "over here you stupid fucks. This is the what they call the start of the fucking problem"

What pisses me off is we are not allowed to use Elon Musks Solar charged Battery Walls in our homes. Our government are criminals and just want to screw people over. Nothing but scumbag dictators only out to line their own pockets.

Just stick a big box of snake oil to your wall. It's what Musk is pedaling anyway.
It will give almost identical real world results
It will be more environmentally friendly
You will save a crap load on capital costs and you won't have a giant useless box on the wall that will be sucking the majority of its charging and maintenance from the grid and not from the expensive but practically useless glass roof

[Wayne]

My My - How quickly we all forget. The state owned and run electricity generation and distribution networks were running just fine until successive Liberal governments stepped in, split them into generator and distribution entities, sold them off and let the consumers carry the can.

The reason power prices are going through the roof is that generators will sell to the highest payer on the hour and stuff the rest, whilst distributors gold plate their networks and raise prices to match. Generators and Distributors in Vic are now making a 30% profit after the Kennett Liberal Disaster privatised the system years ago and deregulated the market. NSW has gone the same way and is facing ever increasing prices whilst WA have just avoided the same deal by kicking out the incompetent Barnett Government.

You can stow your partisan bullshit Wayne. The problem is caused by all shades of the political spectrum, state and federal.
The privatisation line is just the current propaganda line being spun while bad policy design from all sides of government, mandated interference in the market causing butterfly effects to ripple through the wholesale, retail, generators and distribution.
So what happens when they finally recognise they fucked it up? They just fiddle with more mandated policy to try and fix the other fuck up creating more problem.

The system is so broken, the government needs to remove itself and all the interfering policy introduced and withdraw the ugly hand of governance to allow the market to do what markets do. That is to naturally find balance and correct the problems caused by the introduction of subsidized snake oil that did absolutely nothing to add capability nor capacity to the network. Sadly, this will never happen because vested interests and rent seekers will bowl like banshees.

Prices increases are from many avenues. WA went through some massive rises in the last 6 or so years with no privatisation because the previous governments had frozen the wholesale price at artificially low levels.

If you want to see where the main cause of problems lie, you only have to look at what industry sprung up like a giant weed with regards to power. Masses of new entrants all pushing the same product to household who knew only a little bit less than the companies themselves did about any real world advantages of the crap being sold.

Any industry that springs up relatively overnight with masses of new entrants and backed by government policy settings is a giant red flag waving above it saying "over here you stupid fucks. This is the what they call the start of the fucking problem"

What pisses me off is we are not allowed to use Elon Musks Solar charged Battery Walls in our homes. Our government are criminals and just want to screw people over. Nothing but scumbag dictators only out to line their own pockets.

Just stick a big box of snake oil to your wall. It's what Musk is pedaling anyway.
It will give almost identical real world results
It will be more environmentally friendly
You will save a crap load on capital costs and you won't have a giant useless box on the wall that will be sucking the majority of its charging and maintenance from the grid and not from the expensive but practically useless glass roof

Really Love? Doesn't this statement in this post "The problem is caused by all shades of the political spectrum, state and federal" sort of run at odds with your initial posting on here? In that, you were frothing on about Leftists, Marxists and what ever else you could spew out, but now, suddenly, it's an issue common to BOTH sides. Why didn't you just say that in the first place?

In this bout of verbal crapulence you spout Rightard bullshit:

re you serious? You're a fucking left voter.
You are a major part of the problem.

You continue to support the side of politics that pushes this Marxist anti western stealth wealth distribution bullshit ideologly to try and install a tax on fucking everything so the left, who could never produce anything productive or wanted by anyone decided that theyll just add a bit of marxist leftism tax to fucking everything.

So any product new or existing created, designed and built by a company has a government mandated non-existent Marxist widget installed.
The Marxists have decided that they deserve to be part owners and financial recipients of the profit structure of every company and product ever sold anywhere in the entire world. Demanding a slice of the profits for doing and contributing absolutely fucking nothing.


Now you are back peddling to include all governments. Be consistent Love - and, it was the Righties who sold off just about everything that moved so they could claim "surplus" or "costs will fall" - and the moron voters fell for it - for the first term of government anyway

[Redneck]

Electricity - just when you thought it couldnt get worse

All frigging politicians need a good kick up the arse if this nonsense isnt sorted out in the next few months

Are you serious? You're a fucking left voter.
You are a major part of the problem.

Forget your silly fn rant!

I said All Politicians fwit!

That means all Governments and their Oppositions

All need to get off their arses and work together to resolve the problems with electricity!

As they all caused it in one way or another!

[IQS.RLOW]

Because leftists are proponents of the stupidity.

Even when the system is failing right before their eyes, the clap their hands over their ears and continue to advocate and lobby for more of it because like all collectivests, when everyone has the same crap as they have they can feel vindicated that they were able to force something upon anyone. It also fills the role of once everyone is forced to use a shitty service lobbied for by shitty people, there will be less complaining.

Comrade had good sparky spark now I give him bad sparky spark. But now is better.
All comrade equal so cannot complain any more.