Victoria’s Victims: Wind & Solar Obsession Sees 60,000 Families Cut From the Grid After (Another) 16% Power Price Hike

An obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar has sent Victorian power prices through the roof: a 16% increase in 2018 follows a 12% increase the year before that.

Given its Labor government’s push for a 50% RET, Victorians will soon catch up with their neighbours in Australia’s wind and solar capital, South Australia – the place that suffers the world’s highest power prices.

The relationship between heavily subsidised and inherently unreliable wind and solar and spiralling power prices is pretty clear: see above the graphic from Dr Michael Crawford.

Making it evident that ‘green’ energy virtue signalling is a rich man’s sport, RE zealots still trumpet the purportedly ‘inevitable’ transition to an all wind and sun powered future: to hell with the cost, and to hell with those who can no longer afford electricity.

With power prices rocketing out of control, no end in sight, there are already more than 200,000 Australian households who simply cannot afford electricity; their occupants have returned to the days of cooking on woodstoves and kerosene lamps and heaters.

Some might call it a case of Back to the Future. STT, however, regards it as a perfectly avoidable and thoroughly unnecessary social calamity.

Over the last 12 months, the calamity has become an epidemic in Victoria, with over 60,000 families cut from the grid, no longer capable of paying power bills, with retail rates which are now among the highest in the world.

Here’s a recent segment from SkyNews detailing what is fast becoming Australia’s Great Shame.

Energy regulators report shows Victorian power bills up 16 per cent
Sky News
Paul Murray
26 February 2019

A report from energy regulators has shown Victorian power bills are up 16 per cent in the last financial year, with a 21 per cent jump in number of disconnections, with 60,737 cut from the grid because they can’t pay their bills.

NSW Senate candidate for One Nation Mark Latham says if the left were serious about bringing emissions down with ‘security and affordability’, then nuclear would be in the equation.

Mr Latham says current power policy in Australia is one whereby nuclear is banned, coal-fired power is ‘being strangled out of the system’ and renewables ‘win’ by default.
Sky News

Transcript

Paul Murray: Let’s talk about a couple of other quick ones to get to, including this power bill stuff. Because this really matters, right? Now, a report again from Energy Regulators has turned around and shown that power bills, specifically in Victoria, are up 16% in the past year. However, 21% increase in the number of disconnections. 60,000 people had their power cut off. The average debt that is owed to a power retailer is $1,400.

Could somebody now please explain to me when this is happening, when firstly power goes up, guarantee of supply goes down, and the number of people who can’t pay their freakin’ bill is up by 21%, that Australia seems to be hurtling towards give me 50-50 renewables. I don’t care how much it costs. Because there are people who can’t afford today, Troy.

Troy Bramston:  Well, look, I’m one, as you know, that believes that climate change is real and we have to respond to it, and that means we need a mix of energy sources. That can include coal fired power stations. It can include wind power. It can include solar power. I’m all for that. But on this particular issue, I mean, it’s unlikely that there’s a rich person living it up who can’t pay their power bill. It’s likely to be a pensioner, someone perhaps on welfare, someone who’s unemployed, someone who’s struggling to pay their family bills.

So these power companies make a lot of money. They should be more lenient towards people who temporarily cannot pay their bills. There should be more effort, I think, placed on that because they do make a lot of money. They benefit with government support, often government subsidies, and they should be more mindful of their customers who may not be able to temporarily pay a bill.

Paul Murray: But it’s this thing, too, Mark, where people have to pay more if they don’t use anything. It’s not that they have found extra things to plug in. It’s that your cost of staying part of the market, your cost of having power coming to your house, before you turn on the light, has gone up and up. What does this number tell you?

Mark Latham: Well, it’s part of a syndrome whereby 10 years from now everyone will be wondering, “how did Australia get in the position where we put all our energy eggs in the one basket of renewables?” Because you’ve got Scott Morrison. They are spending billions more on climate change policy, no nuclear power. If the left was serious about bringing emissions down with security and affordability, then you’d have nuclear in the equation. Unfortunately, power policy in Australia is one whereby nuclear is banned, coal fired power has been strangled out of the system, and renewables win by default.

So you’ve got a policy specialising with a very limited, unreliable energy source, and naturally you get these problems. The power goes out. People can’t pay. You’ve got all the backup costs with renewables, and as long as Labor and Liberal keep agreeing on this policy direction, which is essentially what they’re doing. I mean, the Morrison policy is just to paper over cracks in the Liberal party divisions on this issue. But as long as they agree, there’s actually a lot of costs in here where you don’t get public scrutiny.

In New South Wales, for instance, there’s an $85 a year electricity tax, which comes from $300 million paid into a climate change fund, which is so poor in its performance they don’t even report anymore on whatever results they’re getting. So we need to bust open the truth of what’s going on, diversify the energy base, get nuclear in particular in the mix. And if you build up your power base and supply, then inevitably prices will come down, and we go back to being what we should be, and that’s a global energy superpower.

Paul Murray: There’s an $85 tax in New South Wales that’s funding an organisation that doesn’t produce reports.

Mark Latham: That doesn’t produce reports about what it’s doing with emissions. So why is anyone paying $85 a year for that? There’s no debate or controversy about it because Labor agrees with the Greens who agrees with the Liberal party. Don Harwin, the energy Minister in New South Wales, is really a green dressed in a blue cap. So, that’s the nature of it. As long as the major parties agree, you don’t get proper policy analysis.

Paul Murray: Yeah, agree. Rita, what did you think about these numbers?

Rita Panahi: Well, it’s shocking. In Victoria for low-income owners, they’re spending $1 in every 7 on their gas and electricity bills. That is a huge portion of their disposable income, just going to their energy costs, and it’s affecting their standard of living, obviously. I think Troy can’t just sit there and say he supports policies that are increasing prices significantly and then blame the power companies for cutting people off who haven’t paid their bills.

Rita Panahi: If the average debt is around $1,400, that means these bills are six, seventh months, maybe even longer, behind. So at some point people are going to get cut off, and I just can’t understand how, in a first-world country blessed with the natural resources we have, where we should have the cheapest energy costs anywhere in the world, we’ve got some of the most expensive. To me, it’s madness.
SkyNews

Renewable energy ‘roadkill’: Australia’s newly forgotten people.