Summer Black-outs, Higher Prices Ahead for Victorians
Thursday, 23 December 2010 08:12
Total Environment Centre (TEC) today criticised Victorian electricity distribution companies, the Australian Energy Market Commission, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) and the Australian Energy Market Operator for failing to learn from last year’s black-outs.
The ’Statement by Victorian Electricity Distribution Businesses on their Preparation for Meeting the 2010-11 Summer Peak Demand Information Paper’, released Tuesday, shows that electricity distribution companies are making the same mistake by building expensive infrastructure to try to catch-up with peak demand, rather than implementing smart energy reductions to reduce the likelihood of black-outs and save consumers on their bills.
“Meeting the summer peak demand with a reserve of smart energy reductions is cheaper, quicker and more reliable than playing catch-up with runaway demand on the hottest days of the year,” said Jeff Angel, TEC Executive Director.
“The distributors make no mention of demand side options, or any smart technologies to reduce peak demand. They only mention the many different expensive technologies they have built to increase their capacity, and the procedures they will implement when they fall over. Planning ahead using smart energy reductions like demand management and energy efficiency will always be a lot better than load shedding, but is ignored.”
During last year’s Victorian bushfires, at least 300MW of capacity was ignored because the National Electricity rules don’t cater for using demand response for reserve capacity. Demand response involves the contracting of large energy users to shift the time at which they use electricity to non-peak times, saving money and reducing strain on the grid.
The top 15% of Victoria’s electricity load is used less than 1% of the year, meaning hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on extra poles and wires, substations, and emergency procedures for just a few hours of electricity use on the hottest days of the year. Victorian Distributors plan to spend $3.8 billion dollars over the next 5 years to maintain and expand the electricity network, but will spend almost nothing on demand-side options that would increase reliability.
“The distribution companies take it as a given that summer peak demand will always increase, and that they need to build expensive infrastructure to deal with it. But this summer peak demand could be avoided more cheaply and with less carbon emissions if the energy companies helped consumers to use energy more efficiently.”
“If we increased energy efficiency, demand management and distributed generation, we would be cooler and richer without needing to burn large amounts of money and coal and crucially, they also make the supply of electricity more secure and reliable, and reduce the electricity bills for households and businesses.”
