State becomes first to ban retail energy "loyalty tax," in bid to save customers hundreds of dollars a year

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State becomes first to ban retail energy "loyalty tax," in bid to save customers hundreds of dollars a year

https://reneweconomy.com.au/state-becomes-first-to-ban-retail-energy-loyalty-tax-in-bid-to-save-customers-hundreds-of-dollars-a-year/Open link View original on aussie.zone

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vividspecter

aussie.zone

The state being Victoria, to preclude the clickbaity headline. Good news in any case and hopefully it spreads to other states.

Taleya

aussie.zone

An example put forward by Choice is customers receiving ‘Better Offer’ or ‘Best Offer’ messages that refer to a plan with the same name as their existing plan, but with different prices – leading customers to believe they are already on the best plan, and potentially missing out on savings as a result.

that's straight out fucking fraud

Nath

aussie.zone

Around 20 years ago, the WA state government introduced a gas reserve. It has been reinforced multiple times since then by premiers on both sides of government. Short version: 15% of offshore gas and 20% onshore is reserved for WA before whoever is extracting it is permitted to sell it outside the state.

I think WA is doing alright, here's an extract from our energy bill (family of four) to compare:

Your average daily usage 15.7778 units
Your average daily cost $6.27 per day

vividspecter reply

aussie.zone

A good idea then and will remain so for a while, but I suspect gas will be close to irrelevant for the local electricity market within a decade. Hopefully WA starts pushing hard on the renewable transition as they have been a bit of a laggard historically, but I get the impression they are starting to ramp up.

On your bill example, the per kwh and supply charge would be more comparable, although I get that time of use etc can complicate things.

Nath reply

aussie.zone

There's a lot of domestic solar in WA, same as most of Australia, I guess. There isn't a lot of sun at night, though. There are a few places like Albany on the south coast that are almost 100% renewable (wind farms).

We still have some coal in the mix, but I'm not an expert/couldn't tell you how much.

We don't have peak/off-peak prices. That's the rate. I remember being pleasantly surprised because our bill halved coming to Perth from Melbourne.