Owner slams power prices
Big Tyre director wants business solar rebate offer
A TOOWOOMBA business owner who uses solar panels has slammed the State Government over rising power prices.
Big Tyre director Bruce Louden, who invited Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls to his site in North Toowoomba yesterday, accused the ALP Government of “hypocrisy” on the renewable energy debate.
Mr Louden said despite watching electricity prices rise nearly every year since 2007, the State Government had failed to incentivise businesses to use more solar power.
“We put a 100-kilowatt, $200,000 system in with solar and LED lighting and automatic switching to save power, as early as November,” he said.
“We’ve followed all these initiatives, but we were forced to buy a zero-export system (that does not send excess power to the grid), because Ergon will not pay us any money for the energy we produce.
“The thing that’s hit us is the hypocrisy in the system.”
Under current rules, energy network providers like Ergon cannot offer the solar rebate for excess energy above 5kW.
Mr Louden said on top of offering subsidies, the State Government should bring in a commercial solar rebate scheme to encourage more business owners to invest in solar.
“We’ve found that other than a short bit where they were static for about a year, since 2007 power prices have been escalating – they haven’t kept to CPI at all,” he said.
“We need a return on investment, because what we’ve seen in the last 10 years with power prices is (there hasn’t been) a serious move to reduce them.
“The current government says that they are wanting efficient power prices, but the actual fact is they keep pushing them up more than CPI.”
Mr Nicholls slammed Labor over the rising cost of electricity, despite Queensland enjoying cheaper average prices than in Victoria and South Australia.
“A 70% increase in the wholesale price of power means that businesses like Bruce’s here can’t employ more people,” he said.
“It holds them back from expanding and makes their lives that much harder.”
The price of electricity for small businesses (uses less than 100MW per year) is regulated, but the market was de-regulated in 2012 for larger businesses.