A SMALL but mighty movement has begun in Queensland.
Cotton Australia general manager Michael Murray said with ongoing electricity price wars, a small number of growers are exploring options to get off the grid.
He said electricity prices had been increasing at close to four times the rate of inflation over the past decade, and farmers were at a loss.
“People are genuinely - and we’re not making this up - genuinely finding ways to exit the grid,” he said.
“It is not a massive exit at this stage, but I was talking with a grower at St George who is at the point of converting his pumps to diesel.”
Mr Murray said it was a “no brainer” for farmers to consider spending the $30,000-$40,000 to fit diesel converters.
”We refer to it as the death spiral,” he said.
“It is real, it is happening and it will gather pace.”
With transitional tariffs set to be unavailable in 2020, irrigators will be forced on to demand-based tariffs, which Mr Murray said were not viable for the industry.
“They simply do not work for a flood harvester,” he said.
“They can only operate when the water is available.
“It varies from year to year, but we’ve got people who would be paying three times more without using one extra bit of electricity.”
We refer to it as the death spiral. It is real, it is happening and it will gather pace.
- Michael Murray
He said any further electricity price hikes, like the ones released on May 31 which were exceptionally higher than the draft proposed in March, would push more irrigators away from electricity.
“It will just feed this movement away from grid electricity,” he said.
“We’re now waiting on the Queensland Government, which has given a new direction to QCA (Queensland Competition Authority) to review those electricity prices that were announced on the 31st of May, and they have until the 16th (June) to come up with those new prices.”
