Blackouts costing Australia $11b

THE political power play over rising energy expenses is costing households billions of dollars in potential savings, energy experts said yesterday.

While Prime Minister Julia Gillard blames state governments for soaring electricity prices, top-level regulatory reform is needed.
About $2.5 billion over 15 years could be saved if electricity distribution reliability was slightly reduced, according to the Australian Energy Market Commission's (AEMC) review of rule changes for the state government.
People Power: Blog with the PM today
More than $11 billion is poured into power infrastructure to stop "blackouts" occurring in peak periods, totalling about four days every year.
Reducing reliability means just two minutes of extra blackouts which would cut $231 million from investment costs.
If the AEMC doesn't agree to these National Electricity Rule changes, federal and state governments will have to agree to it.
In Queensland, a review of the electricity network found that $1.5 billion in savings could be achieved without threatening the network's reliability. Darryl Somerville who led the review said power prices could ease if companies spent less on capital.
UTS's Institute for Sustainable Futures research director Chris Dunstan said savings would flow from regulatory changes.
"There needs to be some network infrastructure investment. The problem is we got the balance wrong and we can't blame networks because they're just responding to regulations they're given," he said.
"It's fair to say that there needs to be change at all levels of government. But part of the problem is they've made the system so complicated to govern, it seems no one feels responsible or actually able to make the changes we need. It might be complicated, but there's no excuse for fixing it."
Mr Dunstan said more than $45 billion is being spent on network infrastructure in the five years to 2015, but estimates that more than $2.9 billion can be saved annually if businesses use energy-efficient technologies.
"We're currently investing more than is cost effective in network infrastructure and generation infrastructure," he said. "Unless you're removing the cause of overinvestment and what's driving it, there'll only be marginal improvements."
Energy Efficiency Council CEO Rob Murray-Leach said the electricity network monopoly, like "Telstra in the bad old days", needs review.
"There are solutions to big problems and they're all cheaper options. We could pay energy-intense companies or third parties to reduce energy demand during peak periods. It'll cost them less to reduce their demand than to build more infrastructure," he said.

heraldsun.com.au  9 Aug 2012

So now we have government/ authorities /  power companies, on a media campaign telling the masses that it is for their benefit to have power outages, where the truth lies in the millions to be made while the power is down.

Instead of expanding the infrastructure to cater for the population increase (for example 30% over  the last 25 years), the 'authorities' are stifling, growth and oppressing the population.

People who may be on life support systems that rely on the constant delivery of electricity most certainly be put at risk of being 'killed'.

A oppressive communistic government approach, run by a corporatocracy?