Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Karen Boyes: Major Electricity Users' Group Executive Director on the Electricity Authority looking into surging prices

Transcript

Karen Boyes: Major Electricity Users' Group Executive Director on the Electricity Authority looking into surging prices · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Electricity Authority here is firing another shot at the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: gen tailor's Anyone with more than one percent of market
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: now has to explain why prices are so high. If
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: you're a household listening to this, you're facing an average
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: eight percent increase to your winter bills. That's after an
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: eight percent increase last year. Karen Boy's Major Electricity Users
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Group executive director joins us this morning. Karen, good morning,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: good morning. What do you want them to do about this?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, scrutinize it. Scrutinize it, I said, right now,
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: consumers are just seeing the market seeing prices go up
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: every year, and we need to start digging into the
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: prices to understand what's causing it. The Authority has been
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: clear that distribution and transmission are definitely increasing, which is correct.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: They need to scrutinize how much of that bill that
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: you related to that and what is related to generations
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: so we can actually get si clarity about what is
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: called in these drivers.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: What about what about your base the major users. I've
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: got a friend who is probably considered one of those,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: says that's coming up for renewal contract negotiations, and it's eyewatering, it's.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's really bad out there. So if you're
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: coming off contracts a lot of our members have sort
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: of three to five year contracts or longer, they're seeing
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: ten fifteen twenty percent, so it's really concerning. And if
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: you're also having to renew your gas contract, it's even worse.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: So one of the things we've been talking to the
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: authority is while this data request does cover households, which
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: is really important to make sure we have a scrutiny over,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: we need to make sure businesses well, they're they're scrutinizing
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: the teriff that they get because it's definitely concerning out there.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: If you what are your members telling you about that?
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: If you're getting a ten fifteen twenty percent increase, and
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: then you're starting to think about gas, what are they
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: doing to their businesses?
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: You're looking at efficiency, how efficient can you be? But
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: one of the positive things that we're seeing is businesses
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: are looking at power purchase agreements. They're looking can they
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: directly from generators so you can get the renewable energy
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: encouraging in some new projects. So it's definitely one aspect,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: But when it comes to transmission and the distribution charges.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: There's not much that the business can do. They're connected
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: to the network they need to be. They can have
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: their own generation on site, but for most large businesses
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: it's not enough to power them for the twenty four
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: seven loads. But it's really difficult out there artypicalarly with
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: those lines charges because there's not much they can do.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Karen, thank you for that, Karen Boy's Major Electricity Users
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Group executive director. For more from earlier edition with Ryan Bridge,
• 2:38
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• 2:41
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