Electricty Rebate- It is on a drip feed

Craig1 · Guru

Electricty Rebate- It is on a drip feed

rmoor · Senior Member

An interesting tip.
Was in the room with a friend when she questioned her electricity bill last week, the usual, about an hour on the phone with a language barrier in place.
They told her she missed the first installment but she questioned that and they said they would go back and "adjust" it.
I spoke to my provider about a month ago and was told I missed the first installment also.
The meter reader read mine last week so my next bill will tell the story.
Think I will ring them if I only see one installment and ask to be backdated also?
Different providers so I am expecting a different answer, tho a fairly strong argument when someone else gets backdated relief?
So many of these "concessions" have bones in them when trying to initiate setting them up.
I was on the phone for over an hour and received conflicting information from my provider and then from Service NSW, it seems so many people doing a job these days don't seem to know the very information they are employed to relate !!!!!
I found this also with Reflection Holiday Parks metropolitan staff, they wouldn't know if their butt was on fire.
Think also this is a product of outsourcing and use of call centre staff.

Are We Lost · Guru

Just for reference, here is a link for information.

Energy bill relief fund

Pensioners and a few others elligible and payment should be automatic if concession details are already on file with the electicity provider. I did not check if other states work the same way, but for NSW the payment is made as 4 x $125 each quarter commencing July 2023.

By the way, if you have not reviewed your plan and actively sought the best, you could almost certainly do better. I am quite peeved with the way at end of contract the electricity companies will usually put you on a less attractive plan. Also, there are often deals to be made by swapping providers. Even just phoning who you are with and telling them you plan to leave, they will usually offer you something better.

Whenarewethere · Guru

I did look at the various electricity rates a few months ago.

Ok, the Kw rate was cheaper, but the daily network fee was higher.

For the remote few dollars saved switching from default. It was mostly a backwards step for overall cost.

rmoor · Senior Member

Yes. Have looked at switching providers but you are correct, very little change.
The costs will continue to increase also. We are surrounded by solar farms in my rural area, plus another planned and a massive wind farm north of Lake Burrendong. Also a new Hydro plant planned for the opposite banks of Burrendong in the hills opposite the van park (those idiots Reflections control, or should I say, stuff that joint up).
Our costs will increase because the solar farm installations are a joke. They are completed by large overseas companies purely to sell them when complete and make huge profits (that go offshore as usual) when sold. They also laid lines at the first one in two foot deep trenches that were filled with rain water.
So whoever bought that one, bought a lemon because the trench lines need to be completely dry I am told. They didn't care about the workmanship, the locals or destroying prime farmland.
They won't build on worthless ground, it is more profitable for these offshore companies to trench loamy farmland than hard ground. More profit.
Problem is, we day to day users will foot the bill for all of that well into the future.
The imported back packer labour employed were really arrogant and rude to locals, but the local thieves were too smart for them.
They may not work much in the "crime section of town", but they are extremely entrepreneurial.
They knew all of the solar workers work hours so broke in and stole all their passports and ransomed them for $200 each.
A large delegation of backpackers stormed the local police station and staged a protest out the front for the cop shop to do something about the "locals".
Bad luck, we have been protesting for decades with the massive crime rates here but nothing every gets done!!!
The cops did nothing as they know even if arrested, the courts continually let them all off anyway.

Along with "Florence" buried 100 metres in at Talbingo and the rorts in renewables infrastructure, the costs of power are likely to escalate, where, as usual we pay thru the nose for the decisions useless politicians make along the lines of the "referrennum" costs.

Oh well, "such is life".

yobarr · Guru

rmoor wrote:
Yes. Have looked at switching providers but you are correct, very little change.
The costs will continue to increase also. We are surrounded by solar farms in my rural area, plus another planned and a massive wind farm north of Lake Burrendong. Also a new Hydro plant planned for the opposite banks of Burrendong in the hills opposite the van park (those idiots Reflections control, or should I say, stuff that joint up).
Our costs will increase because the solar farm installations are a joke. They are completed by large overseas companies purely to sell them when complete and make huge profits (that go offshore as usual) when sold. l

Oh well, "such is life".

Very sad. Recently I visited Daisy Downs, a 60,000 acre grain-growing property near Mullewa, in WA, where I worked about 45 years ago. Just been sold to BP, who plan to build a Solar farm there. Used to have several houses and about 20 employees, but now little is left. Progress?

msg · Guru

rmoor wrote:

I was on the phone for over an hour and received conflicting information from my provider and then from Service NSW, it seems so many people doing a job these days don't seem to know the very information they are employed to relate !!!!!

I think that's the plan. Language barriers firmly in place, paying staff the lowest rate they can. Choosing people who will stand there and look blankly at you when asked a question. Wait until customer gets a bit upset, threaten the cops, customer leaves, job done. No need to train staff or have and pay senior staff and no need to do refunds returns and a lot of other pesky customer relations tasks thus saving heaps more money for the shareholders.

-- Edited by msg on Wednesday 8th of November 2023 05:27:06 PM

yobarr · Guru

For those who wish to do their own research about switching suppliers I suggest that you access the site WATTever, where you will find comparisons of every supplier in every state.
If usage is low the daily supply charge is most important, but if usage is high the usage costs are more important.

If you've got a DECENT SIZED solar system the FIT (Feed in tariff) is important, but if you are one of the many who were conned-in to believing that a small system would suit you, then the FIT is of no importance because you're exporting little, or nothing.

Provided that your HWS (Hot water system) has a decent sized tank, usually 250 litres or bigger, but also dependent on the number of people in your home it is wise to get the HWS power supply from your T11 meter, using a Hot Water Timer to heat water directly from electricity as it's produced during the day.

In most cases this totally eliminates Hot Water Costs, including daily meter charge. Free Hot Water.

A well set-up Solar system, with sensible usage patterns, will totally eliminate your power bill. My stay-at-home Mrs used to run two AC units in my big 4 bedroom house in Brisbane, but my QUALITY, NOT El Cheapo, 6kw Solar system supplied all our needs, plus I got $1000/year cash back from the Power Supplier.

Like other industries the Solar industry has many salesmen with NO idea what they're talking about. Cheers

P.S. Photo of part of bill shows EXPORT, after usage, of 28.6kwh/day. (90 day bill)

Many Solar systems won't even PRODUCE that much power, let alone export it after usage. Do it once. Do it well.

-- Edited by yobarr on Wednesday 8th of November 2023 06:27:51 PM

Craig1 · Guru

Further to this, there was an email today from " our " "N R M A " offering a $300 rebate on your 1st account if you swapped to their supplier. I did a quick check and the cents per k/wh was 40-42, daily supply was $1.73 etc.

So about 8-10 cents per unit more thanmy current supply, plus about 21 cents per day supply extra.

A great deal for the energy co.

btw Yobarr, my daughter gets 60c feed in still, in Brissie.

yobarr · Guru

Craig1 wrote:
Further to this, there was an email today from " our " "N R M A " offering a $300 rebate on your 1st account if you swapped to their supplier. I did a quick check and the cents per k/wh was 40-42, daily supply was $1.73 etc.

So about 8-10 cents per unit more thanmy current supply, plus about 21 cents per day supply extra.

A great deal for the energy co.

btw Yobarr, my daughter gets 60c feed in still, in Brissie.

Hi Craig. That's outstanding these days. Unfortunately I have sold my houses now, and I got out of selling Solar a couple of years ago, but your daughter should be pocketing plenty of money. Do you know what sized system she has, and which power supplier.

There were all sorts of scams a while back, where the system is free, but I'd rather not get too involved in explaining the pitfalls.

As long as your daughter is happy I guess nothing else matters! Cheers

P.S As you have discovered, there are all sorts of con-jobs about, designed to deceive the gullible.

Whenarewethere · Guru

Last 12 months we used 4,461 kWh, but we have two meters.

Current rates (default rate) are $0.377575 per kWh = $1684.36

& $0.957 network (x 2 apartments) = $698.61

Total $2,382.97 (electricity only, no gas in our block of units)

Network percentage cost is 29.3%

4,000 to 4,500kWh PA is about as low as we can go.

yobarr · Guru

Whenarewethere wrote:
Last 12 months we used 4,461 kWh, but we have two meters.

Current rates (default rate) are $0.377575 per kWh = $1684.36
& $0.957 network (x 2 apartments) = $698.61
Total $2,382.97 (electricity only, no gas in our block of units)

Network percentage cost is 29.3%

4,000 to 4,500kWh PA is about as low as we can go.

That usage is crazy-low, at 12kwh/day. A good Solar system would cover that usage with about 2.5 hours production, but because your usage is so low it's not worth messing around with Solar.

My customers averaged usage of about 25kwh/day, with the highest at 188kwh/day in their house. Cheers.

Whenarewethere · Guru

The other issues are:

The roof is common property, so how do we divide that up. We only have about $800 PA for common electricity & most of that is the common laundry which we don't use. The rest is night lighting (60 watts total for 5 hours a night).

Storing electricity & dividing up the energy or proceeds, to me is not worth the administration.

Beyond about 60m² of solar it would start to get more complex. About 100m² would be the limit. Roof is NE, NW, (SE & SW not worth it).

Second major issue, is the 70 year old tiled roof, it is simply not worth installing solar unless we replace the tiles, about $70,000. We do have 800 spare roof tiles sitting in the foundations (saved from a local building for a case of beer). We do seem to replace about a dozen every couple of years (neighbour & myself for the easier tiles).

Garage roof (flat) is another option/extra, up till early afternoon then it is in shadow. About 40m² of actual angled panels.

To me it is just better to leave the roofs as is.

Whenarewethere · Guru

yobarr wrote:
That usage is crazy-low, at 12kwh/day.

I have access to the meter room. I do look at the meters occasionally, some Units are using more, but they have 2 children as well. Other Units are almost half what we are using, but they only have one person.

I did really notice the different consumption when we had all the new meters installed in 2016 starting with zero reading. Quite interesting who & who wasn't burning electricity as I was trying to see if we were above or below average. We are about average amortised per person in our block of units.

Whenarewethere · Guru

An interesting comment from Energy Australia in 2005.

We bought the Unit (top floor), above our 1989 original Unit (17% bank loan rates as you all know!), so we could join 2 Units with a long term vision.

We always had interest in the next door Units in the floor below, our original Unit, to double floor space (a very interesting story in its own right, another topic).

Sincerely sorry for the excessive round '()' brackets in my text.

Changing the utility suppliers, I said we only moved 3 metres (our move was $25k a metre!). Energy Australia said you will be surprised at the number of people who buy another Unit in their block next door to double their floor space.

In 2003 we bought another Unit so if another Unit was on the market on the top floor, we would buy one of the Units next door, there were 4 alternatives as we bought the central Unit.

Another topic on bank finance:

P.S. I calculated all the interest that CBA charged on our home loan. It was $1800 too much. They did eventually repay the money about 6 months later, but without any interest on my money they had of mine.

Whenarewethere · Guru

The Belmont Bear · Guru

We installed a 6.4kw solar system (without a battery) about 18mths ago during last quarter we also got the aged pensioner discount for the first time. We were actually on the road for 2 of those 3 months and the only thing that would have been consuming power would have been the swimming pool filter which runs automatically 4 hours/day and one fridge freezer, everything else we turned the power off at the wall before we left. (We also have a gas hot water system). The rebate we get for power that we sell back to the grid is 7.6c/kwh.

According to the quarterly bill we used an avg. 4,47 kWh/day and exported an avg. 22.19 kWh/day back into the grid, besides feed in credits we also got $25 in discounts and a $50 rebate from the NSW govt. - somehow we still managed to owe them $37. According to their graph our usage measured against other homes in the area was the equivalent of less than a .5 person household - no wonder families with children, no solar power or any form of rebate are struggling to survive. Next move for us will be to install a solar hot water system to reduce the gas bill maybe even instal a battery if the price drops to an affordable level ...A bonus is that the solar system came with a phone app. and from anywhere in Australia we can see how much power we were producing, using and feeding back into the grid at any point in time, we can also call up he daily, weekly, monthly and yearly history data..

One thing I only did recently was change the pool filter from running 2hrs early in the morning and again 2hrs in the late afternoon to running a straight 4hrs in the middle of the day when we are producing the most solar. I should have woken up to that earlier but I thought spreading the filtration over a longer period would somehow be more affective but not according to the pool shop they said it should make no difference..

BB

-- Edited by The Belmont Bear on Sunday 12th of November 2023 11:22:43 AM

-- Edited by The Belmont Bear on Sunday 12th of November 2023 11:23:46 AM

-- Edited by The Belmont Bear on Sunday 12th of November 2023 11:24:11 AM

-- Edited by The Belmont Bear on Sunday 12th of November 2023 11:25:30 AM

Bobdown · Guru

BB, instead of a solar HWS, look at a Heat Pump HWS.

We did the same as you 4 years ago and installed solar panels and a Heat Pump HWS, which runs on Economy mode, 8am -4pm and basically uses the Solar power during the day.

Had the unit serviced after 3 years and the Element was like new, never used it as we always run on Eco, same as a fridge in reverse.

The biggest bill we have had was $93 in Winter and regularly around $30 with everything running.

Used to have Solar HWS, but still need the booster and not a fan of putting 300 litres (300 kg plus) on the roof anymore.

Cheers Bob

Whenarewethere · Guru

My parents installed a HWS heat pump back in 1980. In those days the refrigeration panels were around the outside of the tank standing off 5cm. My sister has a HWS heat pump. I tried to install one but being in a block of units it was impossible.

Get rid of the gas.

yobarr · Guru

Bobdown wrote:
BB, instead of a solar HWS, look at a Heat Pump HWS.
We did the same as you 4 years ago and installed solar panels and a Heat Pump HWS, which runs on Economy mode, 8am -4pm and basically uses the Solar power during the day.
Had the unit serviced after 3 years and the Element was like new, never used it as we always run on Eco, same as a fridge in reverse.
The biggest bill we have had was $93 in Winter and regularly around $30 with everything running.
Used to have Solar HWS, but still need the booster and not a fan of putting 300 litres (300 kg plus) on the roof anymore.
Cheers Bob

Evacuated tubing runs rings around all other Hot Water systems. Heats (boils?) water when outside temp is below zero.

Apricus is the brand I have experience with in areas like Ballarat, where it gets verrry cold. Cheers

The Belmont Bear · Guru

Bobdown wrote:
BB, instead of a solar HWS, look at a Heat Pump HWS.
We did the same as you 4 years ago and installed solar panels and a Heat Pump HWS, which runs on Economy mode, 8am -4pm and basically uses the Solar power during the day.
Had the unit serviced after 3 years and the Element was like new, never used it as we always run on Eco, same as a fridge in reverse.
The biggest bill we have had was $93 in Winter and regularly around $30 with everything running.
Used to have Solar HWS, but still need the booster and not a fan of putting 300 litres (300 kg plus) on the roof anymore.
Cheers Bob

Thanks for the advice Bob I will look into heat pumps.