Queensland Electric Highway

[Lachlan Smith]

Buying energy in bulk is a lot cheaper than what they rip us off for in private households. For our residential/hotel/commercial highrise towers in the Sydney CBD we pay 14c/kWh peak and 10.5c/kWh off-peak on a ~5 GWh annual contract for 2024 (used to be 8c and 6c respectively before the energy market blew up). I don't think 30c/kWh is what an ev charge supplier pays. It's far less than that.

If you look closely commercial supply agreements have two components, one is a complex way to charge for the poles and wires (fixed + usage), and the other part is the actual energy cost. For residential this is simplified to a daily charge for poles and wires, and per kWh which includes the usage based poles and wires cost plus energy cost. They are billed differently, but when you add the components together commercial rates isn't that much cheaper. If you want cheap energy, get solar.

 

[cafz]

Yep. Until now, there was almost no commercial/industrial electricity user which required a very high peak, but had a low average use. The demand tariffs simply never contemplated there would ever be such a use case, and assumed demand charges based on peak use (required for grid dimensioning) would also be a proxy for average use hence ‘fair’.

But now there is a use case that is nothing like that, but one with a very high peak-to-average ratio (especially in rural/regional areas) and there has been no regulatory response to deal with it.

I don't think it's clear that it's not fair.

The cost to the distributor is strongly dominated by the peak use of the site, not the average. This is peak demand charges working as they're supposed to. It is just more expensive, on a cents-per-kWh-basis, to supply energy to a moderate-average-high-peak site than it is to supply energy to a site with a lower peak-to-average ratio.

 

[ZeeDoktor]

If you look closely commercial supply agreements have two components, one is a complex way to charge for the poles and wires (fixed + usage), and the other part is the actual energy cost. For residential this is simplified to a daily charge for poles and wires, and per kWh which includes the usage based poles and wires cost plus energy cost. They are billed differently, but when you add the components together commercial rates isn't that much cheaper. If you want cheap energy, get solar.

While it's true that there are additional levies on top of the kWh cost, that cost is relatively small (per kWh: LRET ~ 0.3c, SRES ~ 0.8c, ESS ~ 0.3c, total 1.4c/kWh). That's on order 10% of the energy cost - so nowhere near what you stated.

 

[cafz]

While it's true that there are additional levies on top of the kWh cost, that cost is relatively small (per kWh: LRET ~ 0.3c, SRES ~ 0.8c, ESS ~ 0.3c, total 1.4c/kWh). That's on order 10% of the energy cost - so nowhere near what you stated.

The poster wasn't talking about just the levies, they were referring to the complete NUOS (Network Use-Of-Service) charges, which includes transmission, distribution and those levies.

 

[Chuq]

Actually, no. EV charging station operators get gouged mercilessly by the power companies.

I've heard that many charging networks are not profitable now, even at rates of 60-70c/kWh. They're setting up now to lock in the good locations. Once the usage becomes less spiky and more of a bell curve across the day (something that only really happens once sites have enough stalls that they are consistently used during the day, probably 4+ stalls minimum) the economics will make more sense.

 

[B3AU]

It's a jump, but fairly consistent with others.
NRMA - 60c (54c if member)
BP Pulse - 55c
AMPCharge - 69c (higher speed for 800V cars)
Evie <100kW - 58c
Evie Vic CTR - 40c
Engie - 60c
Chargefox Vic Govt - 40c
Chargefox RAA - 59/68c (off-peak, peak)
Chargefox WA - 60c
Chargefox Gold Coast - 30c

Tesla - Non-Tesla EVs - 82c (Toowoomba) - 85c (every other open Supercharger in QLD)
Tesla - Non-Tesla EVs with $9.99/mo Membership - 67c (Toowoomba) - 70c (every other open Supercharger in QLD)

 

[aegidius]

They will pry my free supercharging from my cold, dead hands.

 

[ZeeDoktor]

The poster wasn't talking about just the levies, they were referring to the complete NUOS (Network Use-Of-Service) charges, which includes transmission, distribution and those levies.

Apologies, I misunderstood. I don't see any NUOS charges in our accounting. I'm investigating and will get back on this.

 

[Max Spaghetti]

Apologies, I misunderstood. I don't see any NUOS charges in our accounting. I'm investigating and will get back on this.

Amber used to break down all these charges on my bill when I was with them. They totalled approx 13.5c/kWh in my area a year ago. Amber then added that to the wholesale 30-minute spot price and that was what I paid (plus the daily fee). So the spot price could go negative but I was still paying for power unless it went at least 13.5c/kWh negative.

 

[ZeeDoktor]

Interesting - I was proposing to go for spot price for this year while the market settles (and thus profit sooner from the lower prices), but the other committee members had no appetite for this and preferred a one year contract with known outcome. We still pay almost double what we used to pay in 2019.

 

[cafz]

Apologies, I misunderstood. I don't see any NUOS charges in our accounting. I'm investigating and will get back on this.

The list of distributor tariffs with the NUOS charges for each is public information anyway - it's a regulated business, there's no special deals. If you know what tariff code you're on you can look it up.