How More for You, Better for Auckland will lower your power bill
Every three years the Entrust dividend - the annual payment to power account holders derived from Entrust’s 75.1% ownership of Vector - plays a starring role in the election for the 5 Entrust Trustees. C&R, the team in control for 30 years, as incumbents, get to be the face of the Entrust payment right before voting starts and always promise to keep it “safe”. Any challenger also makes the same promise (but without the benefit of Entrust’s expensive advertising campaign). But what if there were a far better way of putting more in your wallet every year - tax free and far greater than the value of the dividend?
We know the dividend ($350 this year) is a welcome relief for many and needs to be maintained. Under the current leadership, however, you and your family as well as business owners are paying for this from ever increasing power bills.
There is an urgent need for your community energy asset owner, Entrust, to focus on what matters - actively working to bring down your power bills and secure the continuity of your electricity supply. Here is how we think it can be done.
The red line on the chart right shows the latest projection of power bill increases. This comes after the Commerce Commission has signaled forward billing increases for power and lines companies. Accelerated price rises are now certain to be at least on this trajectory, though likely even higher.
The black lines show how installing solar and batteries is a form of saving, as they lock in the price at a much lower rate for at least the next 20 years (more like 30). As well as insuring your home, business, or community building has power during emergencies and outages on the network from any cause.
We are at a critical point with energy systems. Everything is changing, new pressures and new technologies mean more and more of your energy needs will be coming via your electricity bill, especially as electric vehicles continue to be taken up. We are already seeing businesses close, partly due to rising electricity costs, and very real energy poverty growing across the region.
There is an urgent need for your community energy asset owner to focus on arresting this electricity price growth. The dividend is great, a very welcome relief for many, and needs to be maintained, but is an increasingly smaller once a year balance against higher bills every month. It is not enough.
There is so much that can be done right now, through the rollout of new technology, to slow and even reverse power bill rises.
As more and more devices are added to the network, especially high demand ones like induction stoves, industrial heat appliances, and electric vehicles, the cost to enlarge every aspect of the supply chain – lines, substations, and generation, will demand ever higher investment in these assets. This will impact every power bill. That is unless we get smarter about where and how we improve and power the network.
The twentieth century model of huge power stations at the other end of the country delivering all supply to households and factories in a one way flow, is out of date. Though it has served us well, it is fraught with inefficiencies and increasing vulnerabilities. Previously there was no alternative, but now there is.
Instead of spending huge new sums on super-sizing these assets, they can rather be augmented with smaller, cheaper, more nimble systems closer to the point of need. These offer more supply at a lower overall cost, and in a form independent of these expensive and increasingly vulnerable, big distribution systems.
Rather than running bigger cables and building bigger substations in every neighbourhood, we can now add distributed solar and batteries to the mix. By generating and trading local supply, peak demand is reduced, which enables a much more efficient, cost effective, and secure twenty-first century network model.
The timing is right. This is all current and proven technology in place in other cities around the world.
The More for You, Better for Auckland team will, if elected, work tirelessly with the talented people at Vector, your lines company, to accelerate the spread of solar and batteries on more Auckland rooftops. Such a rollout has clear benefits to the building owner and occupier. Their own electricity generated on site and able to be stored for use when desired, and not only when the sun is shining, is an obvious boon. As is the flat and predictable cost for decades ahead, as shown in the first chart above.
It is also of huge value to Vector, because each building that is generating and storing electricity takes pressure off its network. In two direct ways; it lowers the overall demand on the network, and it lowers demand especially at the peaks, the periods of greatest vulnerability. It enables a steadier pattern of system upgrades as we enter a period of rapid electricity demand. Getting more out of existing infrastructure.
The rise of the ‘distributed network’ is becoming common overseas. Auckland’s solar penetration rate is 2%, Australia’s is 35% and rising. At first they didn’t add batteries which caused network imbalances at particularly sunny times. But now the cost and quality of batteries has improved so much they are adding them. This changes everything. It really is a revolution for the network, and people’s bills. Batteries are so valuable to the network that there is a plan for a major rebate programme to help more households install them.
“… supporting households to take up renewable energy generation and storage devices would save $20 billion otherwise spent on large-scale projects and more than $2 billion on network infrastructure”.
Auckland needs this opportunity. Entrust and Vector can, and should be, removing barriers to accelerating this rollout to all kinds of buildings; homes, including rentals, businesses, and community buildings.
The More for You, Better for Auckland team will unshackle the experts at Vector from the moribund and visionless governance of the last 30 years of C&R control of Entrust. We will bring clear strategic leadership, and an absolute focus on keeping power bills in check, building an up to the minute super secure and dynamic network, fit for the pressures and opportunities of this age.
The Power is Yours. Vote 5 ticks More for You, Better for Auckland for lower power bills.
