What’s an electricity supply charge?
If you’ve looked at your electricity bill lately, you may have noticed ‘supply charge’ listed among the amounts you owe.
RAA’s Senior Manager of Market Development Kerry Bowles explains this charge and what it covers.
“The supply charge helps cover the cost of getting electricity to your house or business,” Kerry says.
“Think about all the infrastructure and activity that goes into providing you with reliable electricity. First, the poles and thousands of kilometres of wires need to be installed, maintained and repaired if something goes wrong.
“Then there’s the regular pruning of trees and other vegetation around the wires,”
The distributor must also conduct routine inspections to ensure it is meeting the regulatory requirements and standards set out by the Australian Energy Regulator. On top of that, there are costs associated with operating customer service operations, such as call centres, to deal with electricity network issues.
As Kerry says, these costs add up, so to continue receiving safe and reliable electricity, every premises contributes by paying the supply charge.
“The supply charge is a fixed daily fee and isn’t affected by how much electricity you use. Even if you go away on holiday and switch off your electricity, you’ll still be charged the fee, and it’ll appear on your next bill,” Kerry says.