Prepaid electricity leaving vulnerable people powerless
Keira Jenkins |
It’s sweltering hot, pushing 40C, and without warning the power goes out.
This is a regular occurrence for many of Australia’s most remote residents across the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland, who have to prepay their electricity bill.
Warlpiri and Arrernte woman Vanessa Napaljarri Davis, who lives in a town camp outside Alice Springs, is one of the 65,000 people across the country who access power through prepaid metering.
She said she usually spends about $70 a week to keep the power on.
She counts herself lucky, as many others find themselves in positions where they can’t afford to top up their meter, sometimes leaving them without power for days.
“They got food spoilage, they’ve got frozen stuff in the freezer that they have to eat before it goes off, and if they don’t eat it they have to chuck it,” Ms Davis told AAP.
“Then they have to wait until next fortnight for their payment to fill it up again, once they get the power back on.”
As Ms Davis, who is a senior researcher at Tangentyere Council Research Hub, braces herself for another hot summer, she said many people struggled when temperatures began to soar.
“It’s really heartbreaking when they talk to me about how hard they struggle to keep the power on and their family safe, keep Elders safe, to keep their medication,” she said.
Ms Davis’s daughter will sometimes stay with her for days during the hot summer months, waiting to be able to turn her own electricity back on.
She’s not alone: a study from Original Power and the First Nations Clean Energy Network found 440,000 disconnections in the past 12 months, affecting more than 8000 households.
This equates to about 30 disconnections a year on average.
“First Nations customers accessing energy using prepayment services are among some of the most energy-insecure populations in the world,” report co-author Lauren Mellor said.
The report, funded by Energy Consumers Australia, is based on surveys of power prepayment customers, interviews with service providers, and analysis of data provided by four of five prepayment energy retailers in Australia.
Ergon Energy in Queensland didn’t provide data for the study.
Just more than half of households struggled to stay connected during hot days, the study found.
About a third of customers reported having visitors as a time of greater likelihood of disconnection and 41 per cent mentioned waiting for pay day before topping up power.
In most regions, the average expenditure on electricity was more than $2500 a year, with a quarter of households spending more than $4000.
Ms Mellor, who is also Original Power’s clean energy communities program co-director, said disconnections began to “go through the roof” once the mercury hit 39.5C, more than doubling in all jurisdictions included in the study.
“It’s too dangerous to allow people to be exposed to those sorts of temperatures and to not have access to cooling and refrigeration and power,” she said.
Governments must provide a safety net for vulnerable people to keep the power on during extreme temperatures and other emergency weather events, Ms Mellor said.
That’s one of six recommendations included in the report, which also include better reporting requirements for energy retailers, improved access to renewable energy options to lower power costs, and adopting hardship metrics to better support customers in financial hardship.
Ms Davis said these recommendations could make a big difference to the most vulnerable people in her community.
“We need to make sure Elders stay connected to some sort of coolness or to keep them warm (in winter), and people with young kids to keep their families safe,” she said.
AAP
