Empowering choice Four months on from Ergon’s decision to pull the plug on traditional irrigation tariffs, many growers are finding a little bit of research can lead to big savings on their quarterly power bill. On 1 July 2021, Ergon discontinued T62, T65 and T66 - tariffs long favoured by irrigators for pumping water to their crops. These were replaced by new set of transitional tariffs - T62A, T65A and T66A.
After weeks of research and with the help of a local consultant and the CANEGROWERS online Electricity Tariff Selection Tool, Joe switched to Tariff 33, a decision he estimates will save him almost $7000 over 12-months.
However, with peak usage and fixed charges between 12% and 32% higher, growers faced the prospect of significantly higher power bills.
“Tariff 33 has the restriction that they only guarantee you 18 hours of power a day. In saying that it could be on 24/7, but if Ergon needs to load-share, 33 is the first that they will turn off,” Joe said.
In an acknowledgement of the burden being placed on irrigators and regional businesses, the Queensland Government introduced the Electricity Tariff Adjustment Scheme (ETAS), which caps price rises at $500. Unfortunately, the ETAS is only a band aid solution, with the rebate amount decreasing annually over nine years, meaning irrigators will eventually bear the full brunt of Ergon’s price hike. Rather than sit back and watch their power bills rise year-on-year, growers like Burdekin irrigator Joe Linton are taking matters into their own hands, researching the best tariff to suit their individual business needs.
“The tariff itself is a very cheap. They give it to you cheap because they have the ability to switch it off.”
“It’s really the hot water tariff that everybody gets, and most people are aware that it turns off pretty regularly. But what we’ve discovered is they actually have three relays on that tariff that they can turn off separately. The first one is Tariff 33 hot water, then they have air-conditioning, and the final one is Tariff 33 other, and that’s we’re on.” While Joe concedes that switching to a controlled load tariff might not be an option for everyone, he believes for many growers the potential cost savings could trump the inconvenience of an interrupted supply. “Because we furrow irrigate in the Burdekin and we work on sets - the time it takes for the water to get from the top end to the bottom end of the paddock – controlled load can be an issue. "Under Tariff 33, if there’s an outage, the water could be three-quarters of the way down when the power switches off. Then you have to physically go out and start it again. “That can be an issue, especially depending on the time of the day. A lot of people start irrigating late afternoon so they can let it run through the night. In that situation you can be home in bed, and you wouldn’t know the pumps have cut out until you get up in the morning and realise the water hasn’t come through. “That can happen anyway if you get a power flick or someone’s hit a power pole or something, but it’s obviously more likely to happen on this tariff. “But the tariff itself is a very cheap and they give it to you cheap because they have the ability to switch it off.” Power outages are less of a problem on Joe’s 129 hectare cane farm, with 58.8 hectares under an automated trickle irrigation system.
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