The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal’s annual performance reports for New South Wales electricity and gas retailers shows disconnections and complaints about billing increased substantially during the 2011/12 financial year.
IPART’s report states the number of residential customers who had their power shut off as a result of not paying their electricity bills has jumped 25% – from 18,561 during the 2010/11 financial year to 23,207 in 2011/12.
0.8% of the total 2,909,702 NSW residential customers had their electricity disconnected during the period, compared to 1.02% in Victoria and 1.35% in South Australia. In the case of South Australia, it was recently revealed some households have had to find up to $300 more each year for electricity due to power generation companies manipulating the market.
Customer complaints reported by NSW electricity retailers also increased by 53% from 33,377 in 2010/11 to 51,092 in 2011/12 and 50% of all complaints were related to billing issues.
IPART states it will further study customer impacts and affordability as part of its decision relating to regulated electricity prices for 2013-16. The review is underway with a draft determination to be made in April 2013.
Solar power systems are providing many New South Wales families with relief from rapidly increasing electricity bills, even with reductions to rebates and feed in tariffs.
According to Energy Matters, a 3kW solar panel system installed in Sydney can generate savings of around $790 annually. This figure is based on feeding 50% of electricity generated back into the grid – so increased self-use can provide even bigger savings.
As the burden of electricity costs becomes heavier and home energy storage set to be the Next Big Thing, some solar households are considering disconnecting from the mains grid altogether – and under their own terms. If that should happen en masse, electricity companies will find they no longer have access to the cheap and clean electricity generated by these households and that will put further upward pressure on power prices.
