State Governments Must Be Blamed

1st of June 2005

South Australia 31st of March

The electricity supply problem in South Australia where a third of the state was blacked out by an  interconnect must be studied with the view that The South Australia Government is relying too much on the electricity GRID to supply their increasing power demand or load via Victoria and not investing enough in new power generation to isolate their state in the event of interconnect shut off or failure.

State governments in all states have either privatised their power generation or corporatised as in N.S.W.

The states have less control now over the day to day running of power generation capacity, power distribution and power plant infrastructure or upgrades to infrastructure.

Private companies take risks, fact of life, they try to squeeze every last dollar out of what they have, they cut corners to make bigger profits and when it comes to borrowing money or spending money to do an upgrade, they do it at the last possible moment, sometimes causing massive failure of the systems, that we all depend on for daily life.

Governments cannot expect people to find a few stones and make a fire to cook their food anymore, we live in a first world country not a stone age one and besides its the beginning of the 21st century not the 12th.

State governments are generally following the "new mantra" of less responsibility, by shifting the responsibility onto corporations or even selling the infrastructure off to private companies, they think they can blame someone else when a catastrophic calamity happens, this will not work here in Australia as the people who elect these shirkers of responsibility will make sure, the politicians pay dearly for their errors with a loss of power.

State governments need to step up and take back control of the power and energy generation sector, we have all

seen the many sub station failures nightly on the news, over a few years now, one on the Pacific Highway North Shore looked like a volcano a few years back witnesses stated.

Sub stations are probably being over loaded and over heated, before a sensible capacity upgrade here in N.S.W..

Daily newspapers should print a list of sub station failures from their news database to show how many of these

sub station failures have occurred over the period of time since deregulation.

A comparison of other states power failures would also show the Australia wide problem. 

Electricity De-Regulation 2002 in N.S.W.

For domestic electricity consumers de-regulation since January 2002 has many pitfalls, once consumers decide to change electricity supplier, your only coarse is to sign a contract which will have a price escalation clause built in to protect the supplier not the consumer.

At the moment wholesale electricity is traded on the open market and the price can vary to several hundred percent up or down depending on demands of the "grid system introduced by the previous Keating Government."  (Victoria, N.S.W., Queensland are already on the grid, South Australia soon to be connected)

The grid system robs excess power from over supply generators feeding domestic and industry in the state where it is generated and channels power to mostly industry in another state creating demand and where there is demand prices also go up.   

Most heavy industry users (Aluminium is one) have locked in substantial price reductions or a subsidy from government with legally enforceable contacts, no user pays here.

Domestic users of electricity would be far better off asking their electricity suppliers for green power generation as an offset to a small price reduction in power and staying with their original supplier on condition of change "ask for green power alternatives instead", include the following:

Solar Cell panels for their house roof or large backyards as a cost reduction method which can reduce electricity costs over the long term and excess power can be sold back to the supplier, power is fed back into the grid.

Mass production of these Solar units will bring down costs.

Wind turbine systems in windy areas.

Geothermal - thermal power generation.

The de-regulation of electricity is against all other initiatives to reduce green house gas emissions as it promotes the use of more coal fired electricity generation and will push the price up over time in this fossil fuel industry.

Cost saving efficiency should be channeled into green power and not the generation of power with more use of fossil fuels.