How will the power price increases affect you?

I have been meaning to post about this for ages. There was a report on the news that power costs will increase as much as 62% by the end of 2013. Country Energy customers will bear the brunt of the increases, paying the 62% but those with other engery providers will pay less, but still over 50%.

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62 per cent power price rise by 2013


Some of the rise is due to the Federal Government's Emission Trading Scheme. (ABC News)

The independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) has recommended electricity prices rise by up to 62 per cent over the next three years in New South Wales.

The tribunal says its draft determination is mainly due to rises in network prices and the proposed introduction of the Federal Government's Emissions Trading Scheme .

Residents in country areas will be hit with the highest bill increases, with the changes expected to add close to $900 to a customer's bill in 2013.

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With the prices increases we have already seen the past 12 months, we have an average bill of nearly $900. I worked it out and we will be paying an extra $3500 per year for power by the end of 2013. We just can't afford those costs. We haven't used the air conditioner at all so far this summer and we are only using fans to try to keep the cost down as there is nowhere else we can cut power use - everything is always turned off at the wall every night bar the fridge and freezer

we have $550 bills atm.....another $750 on that... :o ....look's like I might have to go stand under a street light to pay for it

I have no idea and I am crapping my pants....

me too. we can barely afford what we are paying at the moment.
I can see us selling our house for somehting smaller, getting rid of/chaning appliances for things that cost less - hell it will probably affect what school I was going to send the kids to.

We are too Lu, hence not using the air con. The only choice we have is Country energy and they are going to hit us the hardest. It is scary to think about and even if they did bring in rebates for lower income families, I can bet that the cost of power will rise again oh so conveniently.

ohh gawwd! i dont know how ill go.. moneys tight enough as it is didnt think it could get any tighter its just astronomical the cost of living

We cant afford our bills at the moment either. I think I have had quite a number of boo hoo threads on our electricity bill.

We dont run a pool or use a dishwasher or dryer, we dont have ducted air, rarely use a/c and still our bills are ridiculously expensive.

Very scary to think about the future.

I will probably have to learn some new vegetarian meals I'd say ;) It's so hard not using the dryer here in winter too... and the nappies... ohhhh all that money i was saving on nappies by not buying sposies but im hardly going to be able to afford washing and drying them!! I need to teach DF to be more power conscious... he turns the pc on first thing and then the xbox and wont turn one off if playing the other etc... the pc i understand as its our music source but the xbox will have been on for 12hrs when i cmoe home somedays. makes my blood boil.

is electricity the only thing going up then? im worried that gas will follow as it usually does then water :(
I might start putting an extra $10 a fortnight into my electricity account to soften the blow a bit

As far as I know Maz it is only the power. We don't have gas so I don't know if that industry will be affected in the same way as eletricity or not.

Trill I was thinking of you the other day when I saw that...Country Energy already charge heaps more....
Sucks.

thankshon. im screwedlike you...friggen country power!!!!!

Thanks Kim :) Maz it sucks bigtime. We were offered a 'contract' with them about 2yrs ago now with a fixed price and it did work out cheaper than what we were paying at the time - not a lot- just a few cents cheaper and it was a 2 or 3 yr contract (can't remember how long for now) and the buggers canned it after only one year with no explanation, but I have a feeling now that it was a cleverly orchestrated move by them because not long after that power just shot up in price and I think they wanted all their customers off their contracts so they could legally charge us the higher price. And it does suck too that we don't have a choice in who we get our electricity from, and they have the lions share of customers and they are charging more and the increases will be signifcantly higher than their competitors.

I have to check mine now because I have a contract with them that if we stay contected with them for 12 months they pay one monts electricity for us...thats $200 and I'll be peeved to say it nicely if they go back on it

The gas in WA is going up as much as the power. They put ours up 26% last year, and another 25% to come this year and next....

Solar pannels and a Stirling are our only choices

LOL LS, we are seriously considering getting a gen-set to use as well.

DH is dead set on the Stirling engine...has even found a guy in Sydney that makes them lol
I simply dont see we have any other choice.
And really especially in WA there is no excuse as to why EVERY SINGLE HOME shouldn't HAVE to have, by law, solar pannels on their roof. Such a waste of energy that goes on here.

Same goes for here. Even a wind turbine would be awesome. We missed the boat on the govt solar panel rebate though.

We still have some rebates here. They cancelled the other ones 10 days early though, so we missed them by 2 days...so very unimpressed with that.
But now they do some other scheme but it equates to the same amount anyway.
Do you qualify for the Green Loans Home Assessment thing? We did that and now we are eligiable for teh $10000 interest free loan to get solar panels or water tanks, etc

I had no idea about this but now am absolutely *****ty my pants. Like heaps of yo on here we struggle to pay our bill at the moment. Guess we are going to turn everything possible off at the power point, no second drinks fridge, use lamps instead of lights and power saving globes everywhere.
How can they justify such a huge jump in cost with no alternative available to us??

we will be sitting in the dark with no computer no net no BB :o no tv no washing maching basically we would get cut off lucky i just got myself a job

Might be a good time to revolt and start using candles and only essentials :angry:

They justify it by trying to make you use alternatives and force the government to use more renewable sources.

The fact of the matter is that this increase will force everyone to look at how and when they udse energy and push them to seek out alternatives. That will only be a good thing

DH is in the water industry and there is also talk of water going up, especially in those areas that are much less than state averages. So glad are not with a water board and deal with our own water.

We are looking at getting solar panals with a loan you can get from the govt through their green scheme..

We already have solar hot water, and I need to cut back on keeping the appliances on when not being used. :redface:

And DH might need to start putting layers of clothes on in winter instead of sitting around in a tshirt and pair of shorts with the heater going.

we have downlights through out the house which suck the power, were looking at this year replacing them with 12v ones that use energy saving bulbs instead, will cost a bit to transfer over though :(
we got our power bill the other day $420 for the quater, im not sure if thats high :dunno:

It'll be hard here too. I've also heard that water rates will rise dramatically as well. I already pay $40 a fortnight on my power bill, with new charges it will be $80 :o

It's ridiculous!

we've already had a letter from our water board (last year it came out) - something ridiculous like 70% increase over three years. it is crap!

we get doubly hit - DH's family were encouraged to subdivide the block we live on when his dad passed away, and as a result, even though for land rates we have one title, for water they see us as having two so we get hit with double the rates! simply because we have a connection point available - it's not even connected! tis just crud!

power increases - we'll just deal as it comes up i guess. we can't afford to make changes to ligh fittings at the moment - but the downlights we were planning on installing and bought a while back - i migth ahve to sell on ebay i think! i thought they were supposed to be energy efficient but i've heard a lot different now!

we dont' really use lights in the house unless necessary. i turn TV's off when we can. try not to use the a/c (but i won't NOT use if it means E stays warm) - i hate using the electric heating BUT, i have no choice given how ridiculously expensive bottled gas is

Girls looks like we'll all be soon back to the 1940's - candles, kero fridges and lamps and no BB to entertain our evenings!

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They justify it by trying to make you use alternatives and force the government to use more renewable sources.

The fact of the matter is that this increase will force everyone to look at how and when they udse energy and push them to seek out alternatives. That will only be a good thing

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But won't that just bite themselves in the bum - I mean the power companies make money by providing power, if they put the prices up so high that everyone extememly cuts back, then they don't make enough money and they put the prices up again. Sounds like a very vicious cycle to me.

We were lucky enough to get the government grant for solar panels and had them installed in December. It has cut our power consumption by half and we get paid 66c for each kilowatt hour we generate in surpluss (we pay 20c per kilowatt hour that we use so it's a pretty good deal :)). To get this deal we had to fill out a premium tariff agreement which no one tells you about! You need to enquire yourself, dodgy...

We also qualify for the green loan and are thinking about what we should use it for. DH wants more solar panels, we'd also consider solar hot water, but we got a quote recently and the payback period was 15 years. So we're not sure if it's worth it. I guess if rates go up it might be better. We already have a water tank.

We had someone from the council come in and replace all our old light globes with energy saving ones for free. Olive - we have energy saving downlights and they blow really easily - grrrrr!

We took up the government rebate for insulation too, luckily it didn't cost us a cent. Hopefully that makes a difference on our electricity bill with our heating and cooling.

It's such a scary thought all these price rises, I worry for us all :o

How do I find out about solar panels and solar hot water? Also how do I find out about making my house more energy efficient? Guess I've got three years to get it sorted before I end up under the street lights with Maz!

We got the solar panels, which has cut our energy bill considerably.

we also pay nothing in heating as DH's dad is a tree lopper, so we have free wook and a log heater. We have instant hot water, so no continual heating on a tank.
We have water tanks to look after the garden.
We do have evap cooling,m but try not to use it.

We are also thinking of double glazing the windows (that we had tinted that helps keep the heat out)

My house is such an energy sucker. Our living room windows are west facing, that means it gets really hot, hence the tint, and the possibility of double glazing.

OMG!!!!!
i seriously thought our bill was bad, makes me feel a little better that some are as bad. we pay about 500-600 a quarter. we have 3 aircons, (2 in the house and 1 in the shed that runs 24/7 due to it being out reptile shed) there for we have a **** load of lights, heaters and heat matts that run for 12 hours a day. plus all the stuff in the house...
we're screwed :(