Quote:
Originally Posted by Exfso
Personally, I would take with a grain of salt what the supply companies say, they are all in it for the profit. Maybe I am a cynic, but here in SA since it went private, the cost of electricity to the consumer has at the very least doubled. We are now the most expensive state in the most expensive county in the world for the cost of electricity, and I believe have had that dubious distinction for some time, thanks to the greed of the private electicity providers. That is the main reason I went solar. For those that say they are subsidising me, think again, It cost me $13.5k for a 4.5kw system, I was most definitely out of pocket and the reason I did it was looking at the long term. Solar sytems are about a third of the cost now compared to what I paid, and the solar feedin tariffs are correspondingly low if not non existant. It will take me several years yet to be square with the ledger.  |
These are regulated industries. There is a lot more at play than simply private providers are "greedy". I don't know the exact SA situation, but it's likely that network reliability requirements meant more needed to be spent. This flows through to your bill. The big thing that loads the grid to breaking point? - air conditioning. So you could say those without aircon are subsidising those with it. Has air conditioning been taken up in a big way since the network was privatised?