Gary Tayler: Line charges lack credibility

Unison Networks chief executive Ken Sutherland is pictured with solar panels, which will cost more to run from today. Photo John Cowpland/Alphapix

Sir John Acton once said "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Unison increasing its line charges to clients who self generate is nothing more than abuse of monopoly power. The excuse that it wants to be fair to those who don't self generate lacks any credibility whatsoever.

For starters power users that have chosen to reduce the power bill through self generation have paid out thousands of dollars for the self generation equipment and installation. This is not taken into consideration in terms of alleged fairness.

Secondly Unison does not supply power, only the lines that carry the power for the power provider; in my case Trustpower. For that service, it charges a fixed line fee (showing on the power account) regardless of the power the consumer uses. So my power savings relate to my Trustpower account only and have nothing to do with Unison. Its line costs have not altered at all despite the significant drop in power consumption from the grid.

Here is an analogy to illustrate the lack of credibility in Unison's reasoning;

Take a person who has a garden and grows their own veges and fruit. Some things they still need to buy from the greengrocer but not as often as the person with no garden. Both have to travel to the greengrocers by a toll road, provided by Transit NZ.

Transit NZ does not have any ownership or financial interest in the greengrocer shop.

Using Unison's excuse for putting its prices up, the person who has the garden should as a matter of fairness, pay Transit NZ a higher road toll than the person who does not have a garden. Where is the logic in that nonsense? As the solar battery technology continues to improve in leaps and bounds, the day will come when I and other solar power generators will be able to justify buying our own batteries, disconnect completely from the grid and pay Unison nothing.

It seems very clear to me that the true motivation for increasing the line charges is to discourage customers from opting for self generation. That's why there will be an immediate charge for new self generating customers whereas those of us already on solar power have two years to wait.

- Gary Tayler runs a Napier employment law company called Gary Tayler Ltd.

- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz