topic Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges in Energy - General

Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

Rowdy1961 — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 00:32:45 GMT

Can AGL explain why AGL are described in a report by Prof Alan Fels that retail energy pricing is excessive. The report states "AGL needs to explain why consumers are paying $60.10/Megawatt-hour more than seems to be justified by cost differentials,” Fels’ report said

While AGL is charging record retail pricing to your customers justified due to increasing wholesale and operational costs. How can it be possible that

AGL Energy posts $576m half-year profit. This is the highest peofit ever made by AGL.

Alan Fels report confirms that AGL is charging excessively. This is Unaustralian and theft as australians have no alternative. This price gouging is effected men women and children, causing businesses to close as they cannot afford to pay the electricity priceses being charged.

It is so sad to see Australia and Australians being treated this way. Why is AGL and other energy retailers so selfish and cruel. This will lead to mental health conditions and death.

https://www.australianunions.org.au/2024/02/07/inquiry-into-price-gouging-full-report-released/

AGL unexpected Profits

Rowdy1961 — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 10:30:55 GMT

AGL justified its increased charges due to increased costs. How do you justify your increased charges on struggling Austalians when the outcome for AGL was its highest ever profit. The justification for these price increases to customers can't be justified if you end up with such outrageous profits. It seems more extortion then fair pricing.

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

David_AGL — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 02:36:29 GMT

Hi @Rowdy1961

Welcome to Neighbourhood, and thanks for reaching out.

We are acutely aware of the cost-of-living pressures people are experiencing and as we announced last year, we are committed to supporting our customers during this difficult time of cost-of-living pressures with our $70 million customer support package. To date, $35 million has been spent to deliver assistance to customers to help manage cost of living pressures.

AGL’s recent half year results for FY24 reflected more stable market conditions and improved plant availability and operational performance. The significant improvement was off a very low base this time last year, which was impacted by plant outages and extreme market volatility driven by fuel costs, geopolitical factors and supply disruptions.

For our most recent price change in July 2023, AGL’s retail pricing decision absorbed some of the higher costs and applied credits to all active hardship customer accounts to partially offset the impact of the price change.

When we approach pricing decisions later in the year, we will be taking the softening of forward wholesale prices into account, along with a range of other factors.

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

APEX — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 00:32:36 GMT

How exactly is this "$70 Million Support Package" implemented and how many cents in the dollar actually make it to the account balances of those worst affected by the cost of living crisis and if it doesn't directly come off the accounts of those affected, in what meaningful way does it help these people?

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

David_AGL — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 08:30:25 GMT

Hi @APEX - I reached out to the team for a response on this one:

The $70m Customer Support Package focuses on three key areas: energy literacy, improving agent training and direct support to customers through bill credits and debt relief, as well as access to government grants and rebates. In the first financial year of the program, we have contacted 115,000 customers with payment support options, $9.7m debt relief for hardship customers and commenced proactive outreach to deploy solar for low-income households.

For more information, please see our media release or visit the Customer Support centre.

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

APEX — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 18:03:57 GMT

Can you please provide the exact breakdown of where the money went and in what percentages?

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

David_AGL — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 23:27:34 GMT

Hi @APEX , I suspect that's probably not a level of operational detail that team will be able to share, but to your original question "how many cents in the dollar actually make it to the account balances of those worst affected by the cost of living crisis" , the answer would be the $9.7 million in direct relief (in year one of the two-year program), which would cover these two points from the release:

Targeted payment matching and debt relief for eligible customers experiencing hardship to assist them with graduating off the Staying Connected program and focus on their on-going consumption.
Targeted bill credits as part of proactive customer support campaigns and for eligible customers on the Staying Connected program to further assist with cost-of-living pressures.

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

APEX — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 02:10:03 GMT

Does that include the Energy Bills Relief Fund Payments?

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

APEX — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 02:11:25 GMT

Also, does that amount also include concession payments AGL would have been bound to pay regardless?

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

Rowdy1961 — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 05:03:11 GMT

All of your customers are effected by excessive unreasonable service
charges. Why are you only supporting only a limited few of you customers
when this has been inflicted on all your customers

The increases are clearly excessive as AGL reported higher then previous
profits. The price increases can only be justified due to additional costs
in electricity production. Clearly this is not the case.

Electricity increases cannot be justified if profits increased also.

Will AGL act responsibly in reducing it rates to what it should have been
set at? A fair and reasonable price?

This is what Mr Fels reported and what Australians expect from responsible
service providers

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

Lester — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 06:15:18 GMT

Last month especially, there was news around about how wholesale power costs have fallen, quite dramatically.

Note, this applies to NEM states, as far as I'm aware, not an expert on how all this works.

A South Australian announcement.

https://www.premier.sa.gov.au/media-releases/news-items/government-welcomes-power-price-fall-in-market

States for SA, and possibly other NEM states, wholesale power prices dropped nearly half, from $64 per megawatt-hour in the December quarter of 2022 to $33/MWh in the same quarter in 2023.

A quick search just found The Australian Energy Regulator recently released its draft Default Market Offer (DMO), known as DMO 6, for energy prices in 2024/25.

https://www.indaily.com.au/business/energy/2024/03/19/sa-power-bills-set-to-drop-after-energy-regulator-decision

It states drops for like majority of residential customers could see price reductions of between 0.4 per cent to 7.1 per cent.

"could see" . . . hmmmm.

Also says other residential customers may see increases between 0.9 per cent and 2.7 per cent, depending on their region and whether they have controlled load.

So all seems a bit miniscule after the increases most have seen in the past 12 - 18 months.

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

David_AGL — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 02:17:21 GMT

Hi @APEX No, the $70 million does not include Energy Bill Relief Fund payments or existing concessions, although one of the measures included in the package is improving insights and training for customer service agents, to help proactively identify customers showing signs of hardship and assist them to access those support options they are entitled to as well.

Re: Alan Fels reporting into excessive energy charges

APEX — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 06:05:21 GMT

....and when exactly was the measures regarding identifying customers showing signs of hardship instituted and more importantly, what is the response when a customer is identified as suffering from hardship?