What is Behind Energex's New Pricing?

There has been a bit of noise about the 20% increase to QLD residential power usage. I just pulled the network pricing proposal to sift through the detail and here is what I have found:

• Energex have increased the fixed charge by 42% (!) 
• Energex have decreased the peak rate by 17%. 
• Shoulder is much the same and off-peak is slightly lower

See below:
(All prices ex-GST. In $/kWh, except daily charge which is in $/day)

 2012/13 Energex Network

• Daily charge = $0.35
• Off-peak = $0.07496
• Shoulder = $0.11369
• Peak = $0.23525

2013/14 Energex Network

• Daily charge = $0.50 (diff: +$0.15) 
• Off-peak = $0.06779 (diff: -$0.00717)
• Shoulder = $0.11457 (diff: +$0.00088)
• Peak = $0.19141 (diff: -$0.04384)

Energex are quite clearly looking to increase their revenues without creating any more incentive for people to install solar/storage. This is what all the noise from the ENAA has been about. They are moving towards fixed network pricing because they know that increases in peak kWh charges are driving people to get their kWh from sources other than the network.

If the regulator had it in mind to call them on this they could point out that:

1. This electricity pricing is socio-economically regressive
2. This pricing increases the peak demand on their network (requiring new capital spend which could be avoided by using the ToU structure properly)

With this change in tariff structure Energex are:

1. Trying to stop people getting their energy from distributed renewables
2. Building a case for future network spend to meet the inevitable rise in peak demand that this creates
3. Attemping to preserve the value of their assets for Campbell's second term network sale of the network businesses

This is about Energex saving their skin at the cost of the environment and QLD electricity consumers. It is typical behaviour of an old monopoly refusing to change their business model to survive. It might be useful for the executive team at Energex to spend 15 minutes looking at what the Internet is doing to traditional retail right now despite efforts of the old guard.

The way forward for Energex is in shifting to income that does not rely upon the regulator.