‘To be seen' as being socially responsible, TrustPower advise on how to save electricity to reduce power bills, yet they actively discourage the more socially responsible installation of solar-electric panels by charging consumers 24 cents / unit (28 cents minus 4 cents for the TECT refund) but paying only 7c cents / unit for customers feeding any surplus electricity back into the grid.

Simple math tells us that 12,000 units / ann. cost us $2,880 /ann. (@ 24 c /unit). So if we save half through a solar panel installation, we still get a power bill for $1,863 ($1,440 plus $423.00 daily charge). Add to that the interest on a $30,000 solar panel installation ($1,200) and the annual cost is now $3,063 (and not $2,880 without solar panels).

Then, if one has more money than sense, one could spend another $15,000 to feed 6,000 u/ ann. back into the grid, TrustPower would pay a customer just $420 /ann. ( 7 c/ unit) for that power when the interest alone which is lost on the $15,000 installation is $600.00 /ann.

Yes, power prices will go up in the future but given the numbers above, one would be fossilised before the system was paid for and FREE electricity was available (as so misleadingly advertised).

Power companies are in business to make money. Fair enough. Other companies are in business to make money ‘and' grow their business to make more money. Fair enough. Problem is, power generating- and distributing companies can't grow their business to make more money because of the limited population base. Solution: Just increase the power prices and make it uneconomical for people to go solar. It's that easy.

And would it decimate the number of power companies, if Kiwis were to go ‘solar'? Of course not. The surviving power companies could just double or triple their power charges over night to keep government SOEs and shareholders happy. It's what economists call a ‘free market'. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as FREE anything, no FREE solar electricity, no FREE market and no FREE lunch. Someone always pays.

Jurgen Giess