Its a sad day when financial costs not environmental costs are the main reason for switching off the power in your home.
With the massive price rises over the last few years to NSW electricity bills, people are now looking for ways to reduce their power usage to try to reduce their bills.
It is a great thing that people are reducing their demand on the electricity network by turning items off at the power point, wearing more clothes instead of turning on the heater or air conditioner, BUT Will this work?
In the short term yes BUT not for long as consumers will be lumped with an average 16.4% rise in the cost of electricity in July. Power consumption will be down but electricity bills will not.
The electricity providers will keep trying to tell you that its all the Green Schemes that are adding so much cost to your electricity bills and yes they do add a small amount but no where near the cost of updating the poles and wires that need upgrading due to higher demand and lack of maintenance over many years.
Power is never going to get cheaper, it will continue to rise even without any Green Schemes to pay for, so people will continue to try to reduce their reliance on the power coming from the street by either switching off more power to their homes and doing without or by producing power for themselves with either solar, wind or hydro.
The massive reduction in prices for solar panels over the last few years has brought the cost of producing solar power down close to the cost of fossil fuel power and with the continuing price rises in fossil fuel power it will not be long until you can produce your own power cheaper than you can buy it from the electricity companies.
Lets get serious and unshackle ourselves from the polluting fossil fuelled power of the past and take us into the future with Renewables.