Why Electricity costs so much

[AndrewJ]

It seems that we are now officially a bushfire risk
( i am in the Melb inner suburbs )
Just had the pleasure of watching a band of butchers going down our street chopping down anything within 1m of a powerline ( almost )

A big truck with bucket on the back rolls up and starts chopping stuff down on both sides of the road. When i asked why they were only doing some houses, i got an astounding answer.
If a powerline comes from a street pole into your house, it can have three parts.
1) Pole to first house boundary
2) Any part of the line that goes across another property to get to your property
3) Any part of the line on your property

Well it seems each of these is the responsibility of a different entity, so a different truck with different oompa loompers has to come out for each bit
Each is controlled by a different administration etc etc etc.
What a waste. ( Unless you are an electricity company executive )
I have "my" cable going past one side of my tree, and my "neighbours" line goes past the other side.
As such I had the fun of watching em walk onto my property and chop one side off my tree, but not the other.
Notwithstanding the complete idiocy of doing this to prevent "bushfires" in the suburbs, ( all the cables are double insulated twisted pair ) the whole mechanism behind this inefficient process makes you wonder if we will ever get common sense back into the process.

This comes approx 6 months after i found people out the front disconnecting my power at the main supply fuse????.
When i asked em what was happening, they said my supply line was "too low over my driveway" and was "a snagging risk for large trucks"
I couldnt get a medium truck into my drive, let alone a large one.

So what do they do,
they cut out all the cable from the street ( that they fitted brand new about 10yrs earlier ), added special new brackets to the crossbars, a springloaded safety catch ( just in case ), then restrung a brand new wire, which only raised it by about 5" relative to before anyway.
Again i asked why my place was done ( when i already had new heavy insulated twisted cable and no way for a truck to get into my drive ) and my neighbour was still left with ancient two wire exposed copper lines coming from the same pole.
Different distributor was the answer.
Someone else will have to come out to change that wire.
What a crock.

Andrew

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Makes you weep, doesn't it?

[TrevorW]

Over here a guy I know subcontracts to Synergy/Western Power to install spreaders in power lines , he gets paid $16 per spreader and can install up to 200 a day, works from 7-3 and often takes home $2-3k per week.

Not bad for a high school drop out who previously worked on a farm, ex Kiwi who came over here because there was no future in NZ

Another reason why electricity costs so much

[Baddad (Marty)]

That's not all either. To add to those accounts:

Since installing solar power to thousands of properties, electricity power companies have experienced a huge decrease in consumption. Due to many consumers on "free power".
The power supply companies are receiving lowered payments and they argue that they must still maintain the electricity infrastructure.
Therefore they have justified rises in power costs to consumers so they can meet their own costs.

In effect the people not on solar power are subsidising those on solar power. We are rewarded with higher priced power because the power companies now supply less to the grid.

The same happened with water supplies in Qld. During the drought people learnt to use less water, then were rewarded with higher water costs.

Cheers

[TrevorW]

Go one step forward with that one,

When the original state rebates where applied here, people who could afford it jumped on the band wagon, installed large systems claimed rebates of 48c/kwh which are guaranteed for 10 years.

This was dropped to 27c/kwh then scrapped altogether when production reached 150 mega watts from solar.

So if all power produced in used in a year, at the standard consumption charge that's about $50 million in lost revenue per annum

[AndrewJ]

Gday Marty

The power supply companies are receiving lowered payments and they argue that they must still maintain the electricity infrastructure.

I understand that side of things, but this is just unneccesary and wanton destruction, based on a stupid bureaucrats idea of what starts bushfires ( and where ).
Perhaps they want everyone to put in "Italian Lawn" and be done with it.
Anyway, one person up the street just found out they have cut one side of his fir tree ( approx 5m high ) right down to the trunk.
He had one on each corner of his front yard.
Now he has 1 and 1/2 trees.
Not happy

Andrew