Xinhua, Sydney :
As electricity prices rise, more and more rural businesses in the Australian state of Queensland are having to turn to heavy polluting diesel generators to power their farms and businesses.
Over the past eight years, electricity prices in Queensland have skyrocketed around 150 percent, forcing many business to go off the grid.
“Back in 2007, our power bill was around 100,000-110,000 Australian dollars (75,000-82,500 U.S. dollars) per year. It’s now over 350,000 Australian dollars per year (263,00 U.S.dollars),” auto parts manufacturer Glen Dobinson explained to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“I feel like we are going back to the future, it feels like we’re going backwards.”
In 2008, the network projected demand to grow rapidly. So providers invested heavily in infrastructure and generation plants. The decision however, ended up being a huge miscalculation.
“The global recession after 2008 and the significant improvement of energy efficiency in both commercial and residential premises are the two outstanding factors that have contributed to the decline in demand for electricity,” energy expert from the University of Technology Sydney Shi Xunpeng told Xinhua.
“Another reason for the sharp decline of electricity demand has been the closing down of some energy intensive users, such as smelters.”
In many other instances, lower demand may act to reduce the price of electricity, but in this case the reduction is not able to offset the increase in unit charge for network, causing retail prices for electricity to move much higher.
“This will create a negative loop. The more diesel use, the less the demand, and thus the higher the network charge per unit,” Shi said.
At the moment going off the electricity grid is a far more viable option for some businesses, but renewable energy options, such as solar power, are expensive to implement and fail to provide power at a time of no sun light.
“When your back is to the wall you don’t have the luxury of thinking about how environmentally friendly diesel is,” General Manager Simon Doyle of Bundaberg Sugar, Australia’s largest sugarcane farm, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
As electricity prices rise, more and more rural businesses in the Australian state of Queensland are having to turn to heavy polluting diesel generators to power their farms and businesses.
Over the past eight years, electricity prices in Queensland have skyrocketed around 150 percent, forcing many business to go off the grid.
“Back in 2007, our power bill was around 100,000-110,000 Australian dollars (75,000-82,500 U.S. dollars) per year. It’s now over 350,000 Australian dollars per year (263,00 U.S.dollars),” auto parts manufacturer Glen Dobinson explained to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“I feel like we are going back to the future, it feels like we’re going backwards.”
In 2008, the network projected demand to grow rapidly. So providers invested heavily in infrastructure and generation plants. The decision however, ended up being a huge miscalculation.
“The global recession after 2008 and the significant improvement of energy efficiency in both commercial and residential premises are the two outstanding factors that have contributed to the decline in demand for electricity,” energy expert from the University of Technology Sydney Shi Xunpeng told Xinhua.
“Another reason for the sharp decline of electricity demand has been the closing down of some energy intensive users, such as smelters.”
In many other instances, lower demand may act to reduce the price of electricity, but in this case the reduction is not able to offset the increase in unit charge for network, causing retail prices for electricity to move much higher.
“This will create a negative loop. The more diesel use, the less the demand, and thus the higher the network charge per unit,” Shi said.
At the moment going off the electricity grid is a far more viable option for some businesses, but renewable energy options, such as solar power, are expensive to implement and fail to provide power at a time of no sun light.
“When your back is to the wall you don’t have the luxury of thinking about how environmentally friendly diesel is,” General Manager Simon Doyle of Bundaberg Sugar, Australia’s largest sugarcane farm, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
