Wednesday 4 April 2012

Daylight Robbery


I am the victim of daylight robbery. Daylight highway robbery, even! I am, literally, being robbed of daylight by my electricity company!
 
Say what?

Suffice to say, in December 2010 we contracted a builder to construct us a new house. The contract included the installation of solar panels. There has been a bit of back and forth on solar power, and what benefits people with solar panels get, here in my State of New South Wales. Last I heard, solar panel owners were to no longer receive 60c/kW for solar energy generated, but only 20c/kW. Now I didn’t consider that unreasonable so I had no issue. 60c was always far too much in my opinion. 

So construction was completed in December 2011 and we moved into the house just before Christmas. In January, we received our first electricity bill… and there appears to be no allowance for the solar power we have generated. So I call the electricity company and this woman says to me…

‘We don’t pay for solar energy.’

‘What, nothing?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You have got to be joking!’

Deadpan. ‘No I am not.’

So, basically, my electricity company is stealing my solar energy and selling it to other people! I was so pissed off, I even briefly considered if this was reportable under the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). See that? See the way my brain works? See my Twitter profile – ‘Cross at own peril?’ Connect the dots?

I decided it probably wasn’t reportable, or even if it was, the police would find my complaint laughable, or just wouldn’t know what to do with it. Plus, I’m sure they have more important crimes to be worrying about.
So I find myself in a situation where I’m shopping around. The best deal I can get is $0.06/kW for the electricity I generate and it costs me something like $0.22/kW, so there’s a bit of a gap there. 

Apparently the house uses the electricity we generate first, but it can’t store the energy, so if we don’t use it as it’s generated, it goes back to the grid – at no benefit to me! And of course, the house generates energy during the day, and no one is home five days a week, so our day energy use is really low…

I am determined to use as much of my solar energy myself as I can. So I run the dishwasher now as I leave the house, instead of at night. I schedule my washing machine to come on in the afternoon so I can hang the laundry out when I get home. And of course, now that our ginormous spa is hooked up, it should be drawing our solar energy to heat the spa and power the filtration system. 

Hopefully this sucker will guzzle my solar energy before my electricity company can steal it!
But for now, I have to wait until next bill to find out how much daylight has been stolen from me this quarter….

This is part of the A to Z Blogging Challenge Series. If you missed the previous posts, you can find them here - A, B, C.

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19 comments:

Stephen Henry said...

Ah, that's not fair!
Makes for a good post though.

Veronica L Singleton said...

My husband tells me I get to excited when I talk to the workers at the any of the utility companies. I'm from NY and always on my guard for toe stepping, which of course always happens. You are a woman after my own heart. Go get 'em.
Veronica
www.veronicalsingleton.wordpress.com

Ciara Ballintyne said...

It's so unfair, isn't it! Grrrr!

Ciara Ballintyne said...

Thanks, Veronica! I'm not sure 'excited' is the word used by anyone who has heard me on the phone, LOL, but none of the words they do use are flattering enough to bear repeating.

AtoZChallenge said...

I had quite a similar experience during my recent renovations. Argh.

---Damyanti, Co-host A to Z Challenge April 2012
Amlokiblogs

Twitter: @AprilA2Z
#atozchallenge

Ciara Ballintyne said...

It's infuriating, isn't it? Just when you feel you're starting to get ahead on your energy company!

Lori said...

Wait. Whoa. What?

why don't they???

that is -seriously- not right

MM said...

I didn't know that solar panels generated more energy than the house used. Of course, electricity is still a mystery to me. Does anyone who lives in the U.S. know if our electric company pays for solar generated energy?

Great post.
MM

Ciara Ballintyne said...

No it's not. Presumably it's happened because someone forgot to legislate to tell electricity companies they have to pay us something! Which kind of says something about business ethics...

Ciara Ballintyne said...

On a sunny day, if no one is home, solar panels can definitely generate more than you use. If you think about it, probably all that's running is your fridge and not much else. A fridge won't use all the power you generate, and there is no capacity to store what you've generated for later use (say, at night, when you've got lights, and a TV running, among other things).

Christina Majaski said...

Hahah they're stealing your solar energy and selling it to other people. And also you immediately start looking up statutes. hahaha sorry, I know it's frustrating but that is funny.

Ciara Ballintyne said...

I know LOL. I can't help it, it's the way my brain works. But at least it's entertaining.

Carissa Andrews said...

Side note… I hope to one day have a home like yours. *sigh* Secondly… OMG! That the heck? Raise some hell!

Tomstronach242 said...

B*^%#*^%, but you know what I think of Utility companies anyway, Frecking hate them. I have another one in front go the Energy Ombudsman, again.

You give them hell...

Ciara Ballintyne said...

I've been where you are, Carissa, and I've come here from there, so take heart! It will happen one day. Thanks for making time for me in your busy schedule :-)

Ciara Ballintyne said...

I was going to but I've been advised there is new legislation in the pipeline. The best thing is to sit tight and see what happens. If I shop around and lock into a contract, I could miss out on the benefit of new legislation until the contract expires.

Sam said...

That's bad, I think here in the UK all our energy suppliers by back the energy that we put back into the grid. On a positive note, maybe us putting our all eco energy back into the grid means that they have to produce less by less eco friendly methods? But where is the incentive for us to create more energy than we can use?

El Ninho said...

bro, can you tell me what material need for making this spa? what is this brown? sorry on bad english

Ciara Ballintyne said...

Well, no, because we didn't build it, we bought it. It's some kind of synthetic wood insulation material - to replace the traditional cedar cabinets that were used.

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