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Ian, this is a question with may, many answers I suspect. I also suspect that early adopters of grid-connected solar (and hence getting the high-end feed-in tarrif) are also being ripped off these days by our power companies.
They are stuck with the high feed-in rate. Ours has another 10-12 years to run. But they claw back most of it by the dramatic increase in fees, particularly the so-called suplly or access charges - i.e. the rate you get slugged per day (whether you're using power or feeding it back - or not). Ours has gone up by nearly 350% over the past 4 years to the point where until I switched suppliers a few weeks ago, was at $1.55 per day. That meant that I was losing 3 KwH pr day of my solar power to them for the privilege of being on their grid.
What I would love to know is whether this is a slug specifically aimed at off-grid solar customers on the high-end feed-in. Or is everyone getting whacked about the same.
We switched and were able to negotiate a $1/day rate, 27c/unit and 17c/night rate (without GST) for hot water and a 12% discount for paying on time. Our feed-in rate is only 54 cents though.
Our previous supplier has come back with an offer of a 22% discount for pay-on-time but this still doesn't match what AGL have agreed to.
Peter
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