State acts where the national rule maker has declined to tread, announcing an Australia-first ban on an insidious energy retailer practice that largely affects vulnerable customers.
Around 20 years ago, the WA state government introduced a gas reserve. It has been reinforced multiple times since then by premiers on both sides of government.
Short version: 15% of offshore gas and 20% onshore is reserved for WA before whoever is extracting it is permitted to sell it outside the state.
I think WA is doing alright, here’s an extract from our energy bill (family of four) to compare:
Your average daily usage 15.7778 units
Your average daily cost $6.27 per day
A good idea then and will remain so for a while, but I suspect gas will be close to irrelevant for the local electricity market within a decade. Hopefully WA starts pushing hard on the renewable transition as they have been a bit of a laggard historically, but I get the impression they are starting to ramp up.
On your bill example, the per kwh and supply charge would be more comparable, although I get that time of use etc can complicate things.
There’s a lot of domestic solar in WA, same as most of Australia, I guess. There isn’t a lot of sun at night, though. There are a few places like Albany on the south coast that are almost 100% renewable (wind farms).
We still have some coal in the mix, but I’m not an expert/couldn’t tell you how much.
We don’t have peak/off-peak prices. That’s the rate. I remember being pleasantly surprised because our bill halved coming to Perth from Melbourne.
Around 20 years ago, the WA state government introduced a gas reserve. It has been reinforced multiple times since then by premiers on both sides of government. Short version: 15% of offshore gas and 20% onshore is reserved for WA before whoever is extracting it is permitted to sell it outside the state.
I think WA is doing alright, here’s an extract from our energy bill (family of four) to compare:
Your average daily usage 15.7778 units
Your average daily cost $6.27 per day
A good idea then and will remain so for a while, but I suspect gas will be close to irrelevant for the local electricity market within a decade. Hopefully WA starts pushing hard on the renewable transition as they have been a bit of a laggard historically, but I get the impression they are starting to ramp up.
On your bill example, the per kwh and supply charge would be more comparable, although I get that time of use etc can complicate things.
There’s a lot of domestic solar in WA, same as most of Australia, I guess. There isn’t a lot of sun at night, though. There are a few places like Albany on the south coast that are almost 100% renewable (wind farms).
We still have some coal in the mix, but I’m not an expert/couldn’t tell you how much.
We don’t have peak/off-peak prices. That’s the rate. I remember being pleasantly surprised because our bill halved coming to Perth from Melbourne.