SA electricity bills down for most customers, ESCOSA says
It may not feel like it, but official monitoring of electricity prices in SA recorded a 3 per cent fall in the past year. That is, unless you’re one of the last customers who hasn’t paid attention to how much you can save — and that’s as much $1450 a year.
In welcome news for consumers, electricity prices have finally begun to go down, according to official State Government price monitoring.
Residential electricity bills fell by $62 to $2182, a 3 per cent decrease, for customers on an average market offer, the Essential Services Commission of South Australia said on Monday.
However, customers on a standing offer saw no decrease. They paid $442 more for the same amount of energy with the gap between the average standing offer and average market offer widening over the financial year to the end of June.
“This shows there are better deals out there and it’s worth your while shopping round and asking the hard questions of retailers,” ESCOSA chief executive Adam Wilson said.
“You can even ring your own retailer and ask for a better deal.”
Mr Wilson said ESCOSA observes the market without going into the causes of price changes.
“But there’d be a number of factors — network prices, regulatory decisions and outcomes of the generation market,” he said.
The ESCOSA report highlights huge differences in price consumers are paying.
The cheapest market offer available was $1750 from Powerclub while the most expensive standing offer was $3200 from BlueNRG — a difference of $1450.
Fewer than 9 per cent of South Australians are on standing offers, which were originally established as a safety net for customers.
Energy and Mining Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said reducing electricity prices was one of the Government’s highest priorities.
“We know there is lot more work to do to bring electricity prices down but this is a very good start in the early stages of the Marshall Government,” he said.
“The Marshall Government has a suite of policies designed to further drive down electricity in the next few years.”
The planned interconnector to NSW and lease of state-owned generators were among future measures, he said.
ESCOSA found big differences in how much retailers paid households for solar power.
Retail feed-in tariffs varied from 6.8c to 23c/kWh.
The tariffs do not include the State Government incentives of 44c/kWh for solar panels installed from 2008 to 2011.
Gas prices also fell in 2018-19, down 2 per cent for both market and standing offers.
However, as with electricity, standing offers were higher — averaging $1138 a year compared to the market offer average $1012.
Opposition Energy spokesman Tom Koutsantonis welcomed the decreases.
“However, the challenge for the Premier is to keep his promise to reduce electricity prices by $302 a year,” he said.
ESCOSA delivers its monitoring report annually to the Energy Minister. Its estimates are based on a household using 5000kWh of electricity and 21,000MJ of gas a year.
The 3 per cent electricity decrease last financial year follows a 14 per cent increase in 2017-18, 12 per cent increase in 2016-17 and 1 per cent fall in 2015-16.
The ESCOSA report does not include any effect from the Federal Government initiative to replace standing offers with a default market offer. The initiative began in July.