Electricity: price and reliability of supply

It's not only commercial operators that are trying for maximum profit.


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A competition class action against power companies Stanwell and CS Energy has been dismissed.

In Australia's largest energy class action, the companies were accused of driving up prices illegally.

What's next?​

Justice Sarah Derrington told the court Stanwell and CS Energy did not take advantage of their market power.
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Follow up.
Food for thought 23 Dec 2024 article by Giles Parkinson (Renew Economy) about the "Broken Hill fiasco" and reads in part:

No doubt the blame will be sheeted down to a series of bad decisions, some of them individual. But for many in the energy industry it is much more than that, and symbolises what is fundamentally wrong about the energy market in Australia: It doesn’t much care about the consumer.

They argue it is time for a complete rethink of the grid – not just the tinkering at the edges that are the product of endless inquiries. They say we should start over by focusing on what the consumer actually needs and wants, and work upwards from there, rather than the top down approach favoured by regulators, rule makers, market operators, utilities and retailers.

Click to expand...

Interesting is the mention of local energy zones (LEZ) and a customer focus approach.
An Aussie energy market with a focus on customer needs and wants?
Nah, that'll never happen. <insert sarcastic icon here>

Craton said:

Follow up.
Food for thought 23 Dec 2024 article by Giles Parkinson (Renew Economy) about the "Broken Hill fiasco" and reads in part:


Interesting is the mention of local energy zones (LEZ) and a customer focus approach.
An Aussie energy market with a focus on customer needs and wants?
Nah, that'll never happen. <insert sarcastic icon here>

Click to expand...

Question is, is electricity a product or a service ?

As its essential to the economy and society, it is unquestionably a service . That doesn't mean that the private sector should not deliver parts of it, but someone should be looking at the system as a whole and asking is the service being delivered efficiently and in a way that benefits society and the economy.

That is not being done currently in my opinion.

Craton said:

Follow up.
Food for thought 23 Dec 2024 article by Giles Parkinson (Renew Economy) about the "Broken Hill fiasco" and reads in part:


Interesting is the mention of local energy zones (LEZ) and a customer focus approach.
An Aussie energy market with a focus on customer needs and wants?
Nah, that'll never happen. <insert sarcastic icon here>

Click to expand...

Interestingly, that's how it used to happen, when it was in public hands, it was there to focus on customers needs and wants, the shareholders were the customers.

What a shambles



The Victorian government’s “aggressive” electrification of the power network is likely to result in mass blackouts with demand forecast to outweigh renewable energy supply by more than 30 per cent in some months, a bombshell report by an energy expert warns.

The state’s push to rely on renewable energy will also lift power bills from the nation’s lowest to the highest, author Paul Simshauser predicts.

The report by Professor Simshauser, a leading academic who runs a Queensland government-owned energy business, concludes the average wholesale electricity price across the nation would be about 30 per cent more in a system mainly reliant on intermittent renewables than in the existing coal-dominated system.

And the report finds that the cost of solar, wind, batteries, hydro and gas assets needed to get close to net zero would be about $300bn in today’s dollars, compared with the current system’s worth of $136bn.