BACKGROUND: Rural Beef cattle producing property of approx 350 hectares running 120 breeders and progeny to weaning; 25 per cent forest cattle-exclusion zone and remaining 75 per cent mixture of open pasture, timbered hills and 8.5km riparian vegetation (Pappinbarra River) zone.
Property self-supporting in non-drought years. Owners rely on off-farm investments for livelihood.
Residents: 2 adults – 60 and 57 years old.
Electricity supply and usage:
Meter 1 — Cottage available for use as B & B/guest dwelling.
Meter 2 — Farm homestead
Meter 3 — Farm shedding, pumps, non-habited dwelling
CURRENT (COUNTRY ENERGY) TARIFF & CHARGES (95 DAYS)
Service Availability Cost/Actual Usage Cost
Meter 1 57.95 .98
Meter 2 57.95 188.61
(off Peak) 4.91 46.96
Meter 3 57.95 50.62
Totals and percentages $178.76 38 per cent $287.17 62 per cent excl of GST.
SUBMISSION:
We are extremely concerned about the future well-being of our environment and are anxious to do all we can to avoid waste of resources and to contribute what we can to the reduction of greenhouse gases and the massive environmental and ecological pressures on our society.
To this end we changed the second household vehicle from one with fuel consumption of 11 litres per 100km to an environmentally friendly one with consumption of 4.2 litres per 100km. In our case this change of vehicle represented a saving of approximately 952 litres of diesel usage per annum and a considerable diminution in greenhouse gases.
We do not have town water supply and for our household usage we rely on 26,100 litre water tank storage, and a 5000 litre water tank for outdoor garden use. This water is gravity fed and is therefore not reliant on electricity. We have the capability of pumping (Meter 3) from the Pappinbarra River for stock watering purposes.
We do not use fertilisers due to the polluting effect on our waterway.
We are self-reliant for all effluent disposal.
We do not feed grain to our cattle which hopefully reduces their methane output from “both ends”!
Provision of electricity and maintenance of infrastructure is so bad in this area (Port Macquarie-Hastings LGA) that six years ago we were forced to purchase our own generator. We work as volunteers in wildlife rehabilitation and on so many occasions we were without the wherewithal to heat milk bottles for marsupial orphans, or to run our humidicrib due to power failures.
The next step in our desire to be responsible environmental citizens is to generate our own solar electricity on a feed back to the grid system. We have investigated the cost of installing a roof mounted solar photovoltaic system with the capability of producing enough electricity to service our needs and to feed back to the grid in times where generation exceeds usage. We are prepared to go ahead with our own solar electricity generation provided there is some equity in determination of the tariff for feed-back. It is impossible to do any sort of cost-benefit analysis until tariffs are determined, but that is not our defining criterion in our decision or not to proceed. In the best case scenario, with Country Energy paying an equitable tariff, we know that it would take at least a decade for us to actually experience any cost benefit but the environmental benefit would be huge.
Currently Country Energy is paying customers who feed back electricity into the grid, less than that customer is paying Country Energy on a kWh basis for the electricity they purchase. Also, it is anomalous that the Service Availability charge is not taken into account when determining the tariff for fed-back electricity.
If you refer to Page 1 “Current Tariff and Charges” you will see that of the total electricity costs charged by Country Energy for 95 days, 62 per cent comprised actual electricity usage and 38 per cent comprised Service Availability charges (SAC).
We understand the SAC is there to cover cost of provision, maintenance and upgrade of electricity services, therefore a similar charge should be available to those people who generate and feed electricity back into the grid.
RECOMMENDATION:
1. The Feed-in Tariff (FiT) should be paid to solar PV owners (SPVO) by the electricity distributor (on the assumption it is the distributor responsible for delivery of the supply, maintenance, meter readings, etc.).
2. To encourage and support the local generation of renewable energy the FiT should be set at a rate that would allow initial capital expenditure and ongoing maintenance to be recouped by the SPVO over a 10-year period.
3. Where the retailer charges a Service Availability charge to the SPVO, in equity the SPVO should charge the retailer a commensurate charge.
4. The FiT should be fixed for the first 10 years of the program after which the FiT should revert to 150 per cent of the per kWh tariff charged by the retailer, and recommendation 3 should continue.
CONCLUSION:
The Port Macquarie-Hastings is not alone in suffering from lack of spending on infrastructure maintenance and improvement over many years. With a rapidly expanding population growth the expeditious provision of renewable energy resources to this coastal region will mean the difference between life continuing as we know it or massive environmental degradation and the worst that global warming will bring us.
The power supply situation has marginally improved over the past year or two, however our experiences show how imperative it is that incentives need to be provided to support and encourage people like us who want to act on climate change by generating renewable energy.
Andrew Ryan and
Meredith Ryan
