Thread: Off the Grid, a possibility

Or they just up the GST.

Originally Posted by CraigE

When this happens they will make you pay just for the infrastructure being available, a lot like they do with sewerage and water now, regardless if you hook up or use it.
As it is the utilities power providers now want us that have grid connected powers systems to pay higher supply and connect fees.

The private power industries will cry foul and just like the car industry, the government will start to subsidise the power companies just to prop them up.

Maybe a 'levy' will be proposed on all those earning above $80k to supplement the 'disadvantaged' electricity companies? Save the power line levy. Refurbish a power plant levy. Start a new coal mine levy. Supplement a coal mine levy. Luxury panel tax. Luxury electric car tax - oops already got that.

When will we get anything right with utilities....

Didn't the gummit place a tax on the motor vehicle LPG in the last couple of years???

The taxi industry here in the Newcastle area used to run LPG powered Fords and Holdens now I notice they are running those Toyota Hybrid thingies. From what I can understand a tax has been placed on LPG to gradually increase over the years.Making it uneconomical to spend a few grand on converting to LPG then pay well above 90c a litre for LPG

Car owners were originally converting their cars to LPG and the gummit has really put a damper on the industry when it introduced this tax. Same will happen with solar, the gummit will not miss out.

Being an optimist, I trust that in the longer term, the economic logic of more community energy schemes will win out over the vested interests that will fight to preserve a system based on big centralised generators feeding into a large national network.

These issues are already being discussed by some people that matter, and in fact there's a conference in Canberra on this very subject in just over a month's time. C4CE | Program
Hopefully that might "generate" (excuse the pun) lots more discussion on the future of small renewables based networks. May even excite a few forward thinking pollies in the big political parties. (Is than an oxymoron??)

Still, even as an optimist, I can't see the current federal government making it easy for anyone to threaten the incumbent energy interest groups.
In fact they seem intent on doing all they can to kill off further investment in renewables. History will judge them harshly, as it has done to King Canute!

Alan

We have enough coal and natural gas reserves to last us 3,4 hundred years,yet we sell it off to other countries so they can have cheap power,while making us pay through the nose for ours

grey nomads have been going off grid for 3 months of the year up north by the thousands all over Australia for the last 20 years ?

Just seen an add for battery storage, they must have been reading this thread....?

Originally Posted by Hogarthde

There is a little village , Strezlecke? ,in the Brisbane Ranges VIC., that is not on

the grid. I reckon it's an old gold mining area, really looks like series 1. 11 ,country

too.


dave

That'd be Steiglitz, and I know a long time resident there whose ancestors have been there or abouts for generations.

From memory his own family unit use a mix of solar and diesel backup for elec. All comphy.

He's a very cluey bloke, into everything...........art, farming, etc.

Ask around for Pete.

cheers, DL