Cheap Electricity – Ferny Grove Queensland
Is your suburb elligible for cheap discounted Electricity – check below?
- Ferny Hills
- Upper Kedron
- Keperra
- Arana Hills
- Bunya
- Everton Hills
- Mitchelton
- The Gap
- Gaythorne
- Camp Mountain
- Samford Village
- Enoggera
- Everton Park
- McDowall
- Draper
- Enoggera Reservoir
- Alderley
- Ashgrove
- Albany Creek
- Bardon
- Eatons Hill
- Wights Mountain
- Stafford
- Mount Coot-tha
- Stafford Heights
- Newmarket
- Bridgeman Downs
- Chermside West
- Grange
- Yugar
- Samford Valley
- Wilston
- Red Hill
- Paddington
- Kelvin Grove
- Gordon Park
- Aspley
- Herston
- Auchenflower
- Kedron
- Brookfield
- Kenmore Hills
- Chermside
- Lutwyche
- Milton
Other Areas:
(If your Suburb is not listed above click on a Suburb below that is closest to you and see if your Suburb is listed.)
We’ve got the coal right here – why is it so expensive?
In Victoria, at least, the short answer is: it’s not. There is, effectively, no other buyer for Victoria’s coal. Brown coal is not exported, so the only consumers of the coal dug out of the LaTrobe Valley are the power plants of the LaTrobe Valley.
Victoria has an estimated 430 billion tonnes of brown coal, most of it in the Gippsland Basin. About 65 billion tonnes of that is in the LaTrobe Valley, and the seams in that area can begin just 10-20 metres underground. It’s some of the most accessible coal in the world, and that helps to make it very cheap.
This is reflected in wholesale prices, which have been pretty flat over the past seven years.
So, if the wholesale price is steady and the cost of transmission hasn’t been blown out by “gold plating”, where is our money going?
There’s only one place left for it to go: to the people selling the electricity.
Dr Mountain’s report for the Brotherhood found retail costs – that’s the money you pay to the power company – had more than tripled since 2008. Last year that money was somewhere between $371 and $471 per household.
So, why do they charge us so much for electricity? The best answer may be simply that they can.
Source Credit:
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunday explainer: why is electricity so expensive?
Other Thoughts!
Governments sell off our assets and receive one off injection of funds that are spent on…. For Governments to have sufficient funds to meet their expenditure they rely on taxes and infrastructure. Let’s think about it, the infrastructure is sold (which is owned by the people) the ongoing profits that the government would have got are now gone. The new owners of the infrastructure have also to make profit on their investment for their shareholders.
In the case of Electricity the Infrastructure is still owned by the government and the selling rights of the electricity has been sold off to numerous retailers. For the government to maintain their expenditure they increase the wholesale rate of electricity to the retailers.
Without going into too much detail businesses normally use a percentage mark up on goods or services. Therefore if the wholesale price of power increases then the costs are passed on to the consumers. An example: cost per item is $10 and markup is 30% then the retail price is $13 add GST = $14.30
Lets say the wholesaler puts the item up to $15 that’s $5 Increase. The retailer add their 30% markup the consumer price is $19.50 add GST = $21.45 The retail price difference is $21.45 – $14.30 = $7.15 The $5 wholesale price increase just netted the Retailer an additional $2.15 profit.
What does this really mean? The Government double dips on the consumer. Not only do they get an increase at wholesale they also receive additional GST. In the example an additional $0.65. This same example works for the government with fuel prices. The higher the pump price the more GST the government receives. It is no wonder the government doesn’t regulate the gouging by the fuel companies.