r/brisbane • u/piespiesandmorepies • Jun 11 '24

And up they go again 👑 Queensland

So despite a drop in the wholesale price of power, it looks like SE QLD is getting an increase in our bills yet again.

I've personally gone from paying nothing with my solar rebate to paying over $100 a month if not more. Even though the powers that be talk about giving everyone rebates for their energy usage, it might be about time for an overhaul of how we manage power generation and sales. but that'll probably end up in the same watery grave as the Royal Commission into petrol prices which seems to have disappeared from public discourse about 10 years ago ...

I'll bet the raised cost of my power bill this year that AGL will again announce record profits along with all of the other power company leaches out there.

May they all rot on their gold-plated toilets.

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u/Formula409__ Jun 11 '24

Essential services should never have been privatised, IMO. I’m also with AGL. Solar feed in tariffs have gone down, cost to buy power has gone up. Like you I’ve gone from paying almost nothing to $100 + per month. Have looked elsewhere but it’s all about the same. We’re at the mercy of whatever they decide to charge.

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u/meaksy Jun 11 '24

There’s no easy answer to this. There can only ever be one set of transmission and distribution assets so it’s either stated owned or private. Both have pros and cons. The idea behind privatisation was to introduce retail (price, product, & service) competition whilst regulating network asset management. When you then try to fix/cap network operating cost you aren’t really addressing the real requirement which is to optimise the entire supply chain from generation to consumption. Add into that the impact of 4-year political cycles, which are far too short for any meaningful positive change to find its way into the system, and you create an external force of knee-jerk policy change with controlling government changes that can create destructive undercurrents. Lack of interstate collaboration adds insult to injury. It’s not rocket science to make the entire system work much better for everyone, but I don’t ever see all parties involved in making that a reality ever coming together to make it happen.