Well, it’s day one of Australia’s historic carbon pricing and, so far, the world has not ended 🙂 !

Although the world is still turning, it has been interesting to see how the spot prices of wholesale electricy have changed over the last 24 hours.

This table from wattclarity.com.au shows pretty clearly that the prices have increased pretty much in line with the predictions. However, as they point out it is still to early to see where the prices will settle over time.

There are a couple of curious things about these prices if you think about the exposure to carbon intense fuel sources. SA has the highest price increase even though Victoria has the dirtiest fuel source (brown coal) while TAS, although having a lowest increase, still has a relatively high price increase considering that most of it’s power is generated by Hydro. It seems that the direct emissions due to the fuel type is only a part of the overall calculation.

One a personal note, I predicted earlier that my usage charges would rise by no more than 2.3 cents per kWh due to the carbon tax. This is in line with the prices increases in the table.

Origin partially confirmed that this week by informing me that my Green Power surcharge will be reduced by 44% or about 2.4cents per kWh to compensate for the price rises due partially to the carbon tax AND OTHER FACTORS.

So I’m predicting that the price rise will be higher but I intend to take them to task on this and ask for a breakdown of the increases.

I’d suggest that you do the same, especially if you are already purchasing GreenPower.