Going Off-Grid: Unless the Govt Stops You !!!
Last month, I outlined how our supply of electricity is moving from Centralized Generation (using Fossil Fuels) and Distribution (through a Mains Network) to Distributed Generation and Storage (using Renewables such as Solar, plus Batteries). And how this is a very real threat to the Business Model of the Mains Electricity Network Owners.
When batteries are the right price (in no more than 5 years and possibly much much sooner), many households and businesses will gladly shift off-grid to enjoy lower costs and greater certainty. And ultimately many households might be forced to go off-grid as it becomes unprofitable for private Network Owners to service regional areas remote from urban centres, and unviable for such services to be propped up with taxpayer’s money.
Now in the medium-term (perhaps 5 to 10 years), being forced off-grid as a very real possibility … but in the short-term the very opposite might occur - households who want to go off-grid could be forced to pay for a Mains Connection whether they want one or not !!!
A bit sensationalist? Consider this: The Energy Networks Association (ENA), the Peak Industry Body that represents the interests of Network Owners to Australian Governments, has in August 2015 released a Research Paper entitled "Future Network Cost Recovery: Regulatory and Policy Options" in which the ENA proposes policies including:
- Higher Connection Fees for New Customers.
- Exit Fees for Existing Customers: designed to recover "the historic share of network capacity dedicated to that customer”.
- Compulsory Connection Fees for All: that would operate like Council Rates or a Levy requiring payment for simply having access to connect to the Mains Grid rather than actually doing so. (I call this “paying for the privilege of looking at the poles n wires”).
This is shaping up to be a massive political problem. Imagine that those who can afford to go off-grid do so in the hope of protecting themselves from rising costs … but are then forced by a deal between the private Network Owners and Government to pay those costs anyway, possibly for both electricity and gas. (The residents of Avoca and Inverleigh may well rue the day that Mains Gas came to town.) Meanwhile, those who cannot afford to go off-grid, remain on-grid forming part of a smaller and smaller customer-base shouldering the burden of paying for tens of billions of dollars of investment in the Mains Network that has been made redundant. Those least able to pay rising costs, will be least able to avoid doing so. Governments might need to assist them through the welfare system.
But will voters tolerate Governments extending corporate welfare to the private Network Owners by bailing them out or forcing consumers to pay for their services, when they arguably made a bad business decision to invest in yesterday’s technology ? A bad case of privatising the profits while collectivising the risks ?
Cheers,
Simon
BREAZE Energy Solutions
First Published in The Meredith News