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| Ideas are cheap | |
Greenies and carefully
budgeting battlers might be pleased to hear of a new more 'rational' pricing
option for electricity in NSW. Some new user-pays technology is about to introduced for electricity
charging. Consumers will have the option of installing a smart new electricity
meter which records how much electricity is being consumed at different times
of the day, and three charging rates will apply: Peak: 2pm - 8pm
Off-peak: 10pm - 7am
Shoulder: other times
Good in theory, but the idiocy of this new scheme is the pricing structure:
Consumers will be charged 20% less for shoulder times, 60% less for off-peak,
but (wait for it) 70% more for peak times. Fair enough you say? Wait a
minute .. between 2pm and 8pm, I'll be paying 70% more for electricity than
my neighbor? Not for very long! It'll take 10 minutes to run an extension cord over the back
fence, and share electricity with my neighbor. At peak time it'll run one way,
other times it will run the other, and I'll settle up with the neighbor at the
end of the billing period. Not since the scratchy tickets on public transport has a system been so naively
thought out. Usually government incompetence
brings only misery, but sometimes it brings opportunity. Sometimes it really is hard to disagree with naive leftie slogans: Power to the
people!
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