There is something happening big time in the area of poles and wires with your Electricity Supply. Bear in mind if the wires and the poles aren't maintained then you won't have a supply.

Since the Baird Governments disgraceful sell off of the Grid this is what is happening.

Case in point

In the Penrith area of maintenance for poles and wires there used to be 125 active personnel in the field maintaining the Poles and Wires for your supply.

Since the axe murderers have got into the act 100 personnel have been retrenched. There now is a paltry 25 workers to upkeep the vast Penrith area.

If you extrapolate that across the whole of the NSW Grid then we are now in a state of crisis with regard to maintenance of the Electricity Grid.

This is exactly what happened in Victoria whose grid is now a patchwork concern and where outages are constant.

You can look forward to this in New South Wales as our previously highly maintained network falls into a state of disrepair.

It is clear from the above analysis that retail electricity customers in states with privately owned network companies (VIC and SA) have experienced the least of the average price rise over the long-term due to falling network costs.

The long term average network costs, which constitutes a significant proportion of the final electricity bill, has decreased in privately-owned networks in the NEM as opposed to a significant long-term increase (more than 100 percent) in states with publicly owned networks (NSW and QLD).

The long-term operating cost efficiency of the privately owned distribution networks in the NEM has increased unlike in publicly owned network where the operating costs increased significantly.

With regards to quality of electricity supply, the average duration and frequency of interruptions is lower than the NEM average in privately owned electricity networks.

However, NSW, where electricity networks are publicly owned, has also experienced lower interruptions than the NEM average unlike QLD and TAS. The change in average investment forecast in the current regulatory period (2011-2015) for SA and VIC exceeds 50 percent from the previous regulatory period (2006-2011) while QLD experienced around 35 percent increase. However, the change in average revenue forecasts in QLD exceeds the change in VIC and SA coinciding with the highest increase in the long-term retail electricity prices among all states. Furthermore, the significant share of return on capital as a revenue component indicates that electricity networks in QLD are overcapitalised than in VIC. These increases in network revenues in states like QLD and NSW reflects the coincidence of increases in the weighted average cost of capital and increasing capital expenditure (Productivity Commission, 2013).

Our results overall indicate, though not conclusive, that electricity consumers served by the privately owned electricity distribution companies in the NEM have not been worse off in terms of:
a) facing lower extent of long-term 23 electricity price rise and a long term decline in network costs,
b) electricity supply quality due to reduced duration and frequency of interruptions and
c) increase in network investments but not at the expense of rising electricity prices as compared to the electricity consumers served by state-owned network companies.

However, the results can be adverse as future network investments increase among the privately owned distribution companies in the NEM. These results give rise to several policy considerations.

The Govt. should never sell off essential services.