A tale of two power bills
When you next renegotiate your electricity contract, expect a significant price rise. Recent changes in the political, environmental and market landscape across Australia are having a direct impact on electricity prices for business. Because every business power user has different contract expiry dates, different usage and load patterns, and because network price increases vary, it’s hard to generalise about what your business might expect. So Big Switch Projects has reviewed what’s going on through two real-world case studies. From these examples, it would seem that mid-sized business electricity customers in NSW will be paying 50% more in real terms for their electricity in three years, subject to conservative assumptions on the impact of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In South Australia, it could be higher, more like a 90% increase. Our case study there will be paying 48% more from January 1 next year. So when reviewing your facilities for energy efficiency opportunities, pay particular attention to the energy prices built into your business case modelling. If you’ve been sitting on energy audits without implementing anything, brush the dust off and see how the projects identified now stack up after these kinds of price rises.

We’re keen to assess what sort of increases other businesses have experienced in the electricity market, if you’ve recently renewed a contract, or what you’re expecting in the next six or so months. We’d like to ask you three questions before you download the paper. All responses are anonymous. Please click here to complete the survey and read the full paper.

We thought you would be interested in what others had to say in response to the survery we've asked you to fill out.  These results reflect a sample size of 116.