$11m power switch

COUNTRY Energy is set to lose an $11 million power contract with Albury council to rival Energy Australia.
The surprise change of suppliers will save an estimated $520,000 over three years.
Both power suppliers are owned by the NSW Government but Energy Australia also has a 50-50 partnership with British-based global group International Power Plc to sell electricity and gas to retail customers.
A committee chaired by Henk van de Ven has endorsed an engineering staff recommendation to buy “contestable energy” from Energy Australia for three years for 41 council facilities using a total 16 million kilowatts a year.
Contestable energy applies to individual sites using more than 160,000 kilowatts a year.
Energy Australia said it could do the job for $3.65 million a year, while Country Energy’s figure was $3.82 million.
Albury council also needs power for 170 smaller sites and will stick with Country Energy for that supply at a cost of $226,000 a year, plus meter and data services at $37,000.
The preferred tenders are expected to be confirmed by the full council on November 27.
Council engineering group manager Dale Blampied said yesterday that throwing the process open to competition was designed to achieve the best financial result for Albury ratepayers.
Country Energy, based at Queanbeyan, is a successor company to Murray County Council (Murray River Electricity), a local government authority consisting of Albury and several other councils until 1995.
Energy Australia had its roots in the Sydney County Council but now has about 1.5 million customers in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT.
Its electricity network, servicing more than three million people in Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle and the Hunter, is Australia’s largest.
Council engineer Anthony Foley said that the tenders submitted by the two companies were based on cents per kilowatt hour for peak, shoulder and off-peak rates.
Energy Australia’s offer is based on inclusion with the NSW Government 777 power supply contract, which uses at least 6 per cent “green power”.
Mr Foley advised against the council buying “full green energy”, which he said would cost $400,000 a year extra.