The boss of a popular seafood business that was forced to shut during a power outage has queried a six-figure electricity bill increase when there is no guarantee of supply.
Mooloolaba Fisheries and Fisheries on the Spit were forced to close for the rest of the day after the power went off about 2pm last Thursday.
General manager Paul Schenk said the business was paying $100,000 a year more for electricity this year under a new, three-year contract but could not rely on the power supply.
“If you’re going to hike your energy price rises by so much I would expect bottles of champagne to be sent to me, but instead there’s nothing,” he said.
Mr Schenk took to social media after the power went off to vent his frustrations about the cost and supply of electricity.
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Speaking to Sunshine Coast News, he said a decision was made to send all staff home and closed the doors when it looked like Thursday’s outage would drag on.
“I worked out that it’s probably cost us $6000. We have to pay staff, because they’ve come in for the dinner shift, and all of our team of 30 staff who were working in the production facility – that all got shut down and everybody went home,” he said.
“What I was concerned about was our stock was going to be off but we were able to prevent that by keeping all the fridge and freezer doors shut.”
Mr Schenk said power was restored about 7.30pm – five-and-a-half hours after it went off.
He said no explanation was provided about the cause of the outage, which occurred on an afternoon when temperatures hit 37 degrees.
“Generally it’s been good over the years, but over the last couple of years that has started to get unreliable,” he said.
“The power has become inconsistent and what we hear from everybody is that it’s becoming more inconsistent due to transitioning (to renewables) and due to huge demand on the electricity network.
“Nobody’s accountable. You say you’re losing power. Where’s the electricity? What’s happening? And they say, ‘Here’s a rebate on your next bill’.”
An Energex spokesman said Thursday’s outage was caused by a fault in the underground lines at a termination point – where underground power meets above-ground lines.
The spokesman said underground faults could take longer to fix than above-ground faults.
He had no information indicating the fault was related to the heat.
“In South-East Queensland, we have an extremely reliable network and we do have a very thorough maintenance program on the electrical network but like any engineering equipment, there are things that do fail and we saw that on Thursday,” he said.
Mr Schenk said utilities and services such as electricity had been more affordable and reliable before privatisation.
He called on the state government to cap electricity prices and for governments of all levels to look at how to keep costs down across the board.
It was getting harder to be in business when costs kept rising and the only way to recoup the expenses was to pass them on to customers, he said.
“But there’s only so much people will pay for fish ‘n’ chips. How much is too much to pay for prawns?” he said.
