• Electricity report recommends privatising TasNetworks
    16 replies, posted
Ross Robbins has 28 solar panels and several batteries installed at his Launceston home. The set-up allows Mr Robbins to use, store and feed solar energy back into the grid, as well as avoiding hefty energy bills. "I wanted to be independent of Aurora," he said referring to Tasmania's state-owned retailer, which he believes is slugging customers too much to keep the lights on. "In two years, conservatively it's saved us about $6,000." The Grattan Institute has warned of an electricity 'death spiral'; where high power prices encourage consumers like Mr Robbins to adopt to off-grid technologies, like solar, which leads to lower electricity consumption from the grid. Consumers who remain with TasNetworks would face higher prices while the government business struggled to recover costs. The report found overinvestment in the state-owned electricity distribution and transmission network has added around an extra $150 per year to the average power bill. Almost half of a typical residential electricity bill goes towards paying for the grid: the poles, wires and substations that transport electricity from power stations to homes and businesses. "Poor decisions by governments, in the form of overzealous reliability standards, and poor decisions by these businesses, in the form of excessive capital spending, have together produced much higher electricity prices for consumers," the report said. It has urged the Tasmanian Government write down the value of TasNetworks by $750 million and privatise the government business enterprise to help limit power price rises to consumers. Energy analyst agrees changes needed Energy analyst Marc White said the State-Government-owned TasNetworks had built big transmission lines "to cope with load growth that never eventuated". TasNetworks' high electricity prices could cause 'death spiral' ..
I expect the nationalisation brigade to be here any moment despite the fact that state-owned utilities slug their customers for more than privately owned utilities. They'll probably blame SA's prices on privatization as well.
I have seen too many bad examples of privatised infrastructure. I also don't trust this report since the 'need to privatise ' part follows from no logical argument. The logical followup to 'this government operation is going wrong' is to improve the operation, not to privatise it.
as an american my first instinct is absolutely to assume it's a ruse to just let somebody butt in to provide a new service, while doing to improve the situation and charge the same prices
Dunno, man. It CAN be done well. Check out this chart: https://i.imgur.com/w6kMbkH.png Guess which regions are serviced by a state-owned electric company and which aren't?
My local station (which I'm by ordinance required to buy from or I'll be condemned,) forces their customers to pay 3.6 times all the other lines around it. The city-owned one three streets down is less than an 1/8 per kilowatt. Privatization, especially in america, fucks the consumer to the nth degree.
electricity, water and gas should never be privately controlled you cannot expect utilities that are requirements for life to be controlled with any care or restraint, when they're in the hands of companies pursuing profit.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1809/9669bcf9-fd23-439c-b0a9-df44ba79daf3/OC.png
Shit, the guy in the op was saving over 250 a month if my head math is correct
TVA is a state run power company and my electricity is so piss fucking cheap I can piss it away like it's going out of style with incandescent lighting left on 24/7, a gaming computer left on 24/7, tons of window ACs and space heaters as temps dictate, etc, and *still* not see a three figure bill at the end of each month.
Well, uh, I mean, just because your local power plants are renewable doesn't mean that your consumption is carbon free. The electricity grid is continental, any surplus energy your local hydroelectric dams produce is sold to other parts of the country, and the costlier power plants are temporarily shut down because of the lower demand. Conversely, the more electricity you draw, the less surplus is available, the more power plants (some of them not carbon neutral) have to be booted up for supply to satisfy demand. Saving power is still an important thing to do, even if it's cheap and even if your local electricity production is renewable.
If the Dam can't keep me running the nuke plant in Springfield, TN takes up the slack. There's literally no way I could get carbon in the air like you're describing because there aren't any coal plants close enough to my house to feed me. It's either hydroelectric or nuclear. So, no, not gonna bother conserving power. I don't need to. I have clean, green, cheap-as-can-be, highly reliable electricity no matter what happens. Why would I not freely enjoy it?!
I dunno I live in montreal and I still try to switch off lights when I'm not using them. saving money is saving money, even if the overall bill is cheap
Nah dude, I explained it to you, it's not about your local power plants running out of juice to power your stuff. Any power plant that's profitable enough to sell at competitive prices (your local dam and nuclear power plant are most probably in that category) is always running at 100% capacity no matter the demand. The whole network, which spans a massive area no matter your locality, is synchronous, which means the location of the power plants doesn't matter (unless an isolated part of the grid isn't supplied with enough power locally and is linked to the rest with cables that aren't big enough for the amount of power that needs to be drawn, in which case you've got an outage, but that's besides the point), what matters is the production and demand across the entire grid. You're all in this together. As far as pollution is concerned, you impact is proportional to what you draw. I don't know about the details when it comes to the US network and their policies, but in a nutshell, the ones in charge of distributing electricity across your grid "buy" electricity from power plants which sell at the lowest price first, and keep "buying" for higher and higher prices until the demand across the entirety of the grid is met. In the US, the energy mix is majorly dominated by fossil fuels, which means at every hour of every day, no matter the demand, a large portion of your electricity is produced from CO2-emitting sources. Even in France, where "carbon-neutral" sources account for roughly 90% of available power, there is always a small part of supplied power that comes from polluting sources. So when you turn on your gaming PC, when you leave on your incandescent light bulbs 24/7, your TV on, and simultaneously turn on windows AC and space heaters (why the fuck would you do that lol), does your local dam provide the additional energy? Nope. It's likely to be operating at maximum capacity already. Does the neighboring NPP? Most likely not. In fact, contrary to how it works in France, US NPP seem to rarely load follow (that is, vary their production based on the demand). Where does it come from then? Well, your additional need for energy piled up on top of the needs of everybody else across your network, further increasing demand, and lo and behold, due to several factors (cost, bootup speeds, etc...) a gas plant more than likely did the additional work required, which effectively translates into more CO2 emissions, among other gases. So I hope that answers your question! Remember, wear warm clothes inside during winter instead of turning up the heat, don't take hot showers for too long, don't forget to turn off the lights whenever you're not in the room, ease up on the AC. In the long term, invest in efficient insulation for your house, design it in a smart, energy-efficient way if you plan on building one. Maybe you could invest in a couple of solar panels too, to lower your demand. Welcome to the world of energy saving and responsibility! On top of not molesting our planet lifeless, you'll also get a somewhat cheaper bill, think of it as a bonus. With great drawn power comes great responsibility in fucking up the planet of generations future.
Oh god that's a terrible idea. We have privatized power here and its fucking awful. FP&L is literally cancer
Yeah please don't let the free market within a billion miles of anything that's completely inelastic thank you
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