[zizee]

I live in Aus, and i think I am pay 28c per kilowatt/hr. It wasn't long ago that we were paying 22c.

Power prices in Australia is becoming one of the bigger political talking points at the moment. There is a lot of finger pointing going on. The main culprits appear to be:

1. a poorly designed energy market where electricity suppliers can get paid more by turning down their capacity, increasing scarcity to lead to price spikes, at which they can sell their electricity for inflated prices 2. governments allowing exporting of too much of the countries natural gas supplies - the spike in natural gas prices has caused increased costs for natural gas power stations 3. the market not accommodating the intermittent nature of solar / wind properly 4. the desire to decommission coal stations (probably because coal is on the nose, but more likely that gas stations can fire up/down quicker in response to renewable volatility, and coal is too slow in this respect)