Curmudgeon; there is a fair bit of difference between the figures the feds have put out:

http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/07/carbon-battle-1.jpg

And what the NSW Government have put out; for instance nearly 6% difference in the cost of the electricity. I also can't see any allowance or inclusion of what the Feed in Tariff is costing, which was estimated in this article to be $140 per year per residential bill.

Does anyone know what the electricity is costing? The customer only has 3 things to go; the rate per KwH, which has gone up, the total usage, which in most cases has gone down, the additions, the CO2 tax and AGW/Green imposts, which have gone up.

From an electrical engineer's experience, the term "gold plating" is thrown around by accountants who have little to no concept of cost vs benefit.

An old electrical network can be compared to a 20yr old Volkswagen beetle. It gets you and your partner from A to B reasonably reliably. However, as your family grows, you need a bigger car. Then you start looking at safety such as air bags and crumple zones, reliability etc. Many of the journeys will still have only one person, but the larger car is essential some of the time. Is this gold plating? A Ferrari would definitely be, a station wagon would not.

The cost of losing power is vast. Imagine at peak time (about 6-7pm) when people are making dinner, the system overloads and trips. Thousands of families can't cook, watch TV, or do their homework. Small businesses such as restaurants have to close for the night and lose thousands for a $100 worth of power.

Large manufacturing concerns such as the one I work for have dual independent feeds, as the loss of power for 1/2 an hour will shut the plant for 6 hrs and cost 3 wks worth of electricity in lost production. A productivity investigation would reasonably quickly be able to determine the cost benefit relationship at various levels of investment. Given that this system upgrade was driven by the Unions, there may very well be gold plating, but I wouldn't take Juliar's word for it.

Also, Juliar crying foul after Labor has spent the money is more than a little rich.

Well anyone who opens their eyes, can see where the money is going. They had to replace a pole here recently, as the top had cracked, which was noticed when the helicopter flying around and checking every pole, picked it up. First we had a crew inspecting the pole, then eventually a crew of about 8 men and 4 vehicles to replace it.

I'd hate to think what the whole exercise cost, but my neighbour did burn down one of their poles by accident and IIRC the bill came to something like 7000$ to replace it. Multiply that out over 8.5 million poles and you have serious money involved

I believe that blaming state govts for unprecedented energy price rise is a fair; given, it is states who control the wholesale/retail electricity prices. Besides, Abbott and others seemed to think it fair to blame Gillard for every pre carbon tax price rise!
My power bill doubled and then doubled again the last two years of a Captain Bligh government.
The excuse trotted out was, a shortage of water.
We've got no shortage of water now, and no price reduction!
The states gas business was privatised just a few years ago. The very first consequence? A 400% price rise! And here's the federal govt, shouting from the rooftops, they're our resources!
It's our coal and our power stations, not a gravy train to be plundered by state pollies, simply too unimaginative, to try anything else, even as our manufacturing heads offshore, to seek lower prices.
Coal-fired power cost around 3-4 cents PKH to make. Add in the carbon tax and it goes to 4-5 cents, add a 100% mark-up retail component, and it could be 8-10 cents?
[9 cents retail in many parts of the completely privatised USA?]
Every thing else above that number is BS by the SHIPLOAD, or Gold plated delivery systems.
We consumers need other options, to introduce genuine competition, such as state gas supply being converted to power and free hot water in the home, via the roll out of heavily subsidised ceramic fuel cells.
And that would be a very clever way to stimulate manufacturing, the economy and subsequent tax receipts!
Any money outlay, could be recovered via increased NG charges, over say 10 years.
Underground pipes don't rot or blow over with every high wind or burn down with every fire storm; or indeed, create said fire storm, with massive loss of life and property, after being blown down.
I don't see any so called state or federal leader, with the testicular fortitude to reverse recent trends, and reinvent (a) public energy corporation(s), mandated to bring downward pressure on energy prices, via the implementation of genuine competition; and or, lower cost alternatives!
Rhrosty.

cohenite
take your point on the figures but actualy the agreement is reasonably close considering one is for NSW and one is national.. and I did say somewhere close to reality..

Looking for an exact figure is probably a waste of time in any case. But as a rule of thumb.. about half for wholesale costs, another quarter to one third for actually generating the stuff, plus another 10 per cent on admin.. and the rest on carbon/green? Or does that not sound fair?

Wholesale power prices have been falling of late, incidentally, despite the green idiocy... because demand has been falling..

Yabby - you're in WA right? That's a whole different ball game.. all the arguement has been over the East Aus grid which isn't connected.. but you're power prices have been going up to, I take it??

Shadow Minister - some good points there.

Curmudgeon,

I live in WA and my bill has at least doubled in the past few years...same issues I think. Updating infrastructure etc.