[Hagar (Doug)]

You are no orphan Steve, My bill has sky rocketed. I actually work for a large electricity company, get a 25% discount and still pay a huge increase in my bill.
You will find the committment to buy and manage the home solar scheme has cost most companies dearly and the increases we all recieve are partly to pay for the management of such schemes.

I very much doubt we will ever see reasonable feed in tarrifs again. The whole process is now set to faulter and stall. The current feed in tarrifs show no incetive to install a system and even break square let alone show even a small profit anyone prepared to make the outlay equired to install a solar system.

Solar hot water is the greatest investment you can make on your house these days and will pay for itself in just a few years instead of the 20+ years most will need to recoup the cost of a solar generation system.

Originally Posted by kinetic

Pete.

here is my assessment of myself, in Adelaide , a typical family on a single income, with two kids:

We are both very frugal as parents in this house with power etc.
Our typical quarterly bill (2 adults-2 kids) is usually $350/q
We were aghast to recently get a $450 bill ($100 more /q)
We hadn't done ANYTHING out of the usual usage pattern...if fact had
used less power for things like air con etc in that quarter.

So it remained a mystery why a quarterly bill is higher...by the tune of $100
Then we looked into it...the service charge had risen, the summer tariff had risen and the winter tariff had risen.
For roughly the same KW/h usage as a typical quarter.

Bottom line is...they expect us to wear that as a normal thing???...for an essential
service to increase by an amount way over CPI etc. ????
When they were asked to explain to the Regulator reasons for an increase over CPI:
'To replace ageing infrastructure and increased supply/ market costs'

Well, we all know that is happening with every essential service lately.
But we wear it as typical , apathetic Aussies that we are.

Water bill: same excuse but added to that is a 'Save the Murray' levy.
We all know how successful the use of that fund collection measure has
been in the 10 years it has been collected.
On top of that is a levy to pay for the de-sal plant.
A plant that a Spanish private consortium built.
Completion was late, there were damage clauses for late completion.
Somehow, the state govt caved in when they pressed it in the courts.

Council rates: same excuse. Most upkeep/ maintenance council services are outsourced, and something as basic as mowing
a reserve adjacent your property is done by a contractor that tenders for council work.
We have to ring the council to get the reserve mowed when the grass reaches 2 ft high in a fire season.
They only mow it when people ring and complain.
They recently re-categorised our reserve as low in the upkeep/ mtce list.
That means it gets dealt with when people complain. <facepalm>
So, apart from emptying our bins and mowing our lawns when we complain, they increase our rates by way over the CPI each year.
Our rates have quadrupled in 10 years....

Back to solar:

A 1.5kw system...in reach for a typical family like me will only change my
power bill by roughly $100/quarter...about what the latest bill went up by.

I'd have to do the solar install on terms...IE, add it to the home loan (not cash).
This would make it probably take 10 years or so to break even.
In that time supply charges/increases will absorb that.
The panels might fail in 10 years.

So, if you can't pay cash....I wouldn't bother.

Sorry to the OP for the rant.

steve