Confidence in Australia's main electricity market has suffered its sharpest ever collapse as the crisis engulfing the east coast energy industry hits home for consumers.
Ahead of price hikes for many of EnergyAustralia's customers kicking in on Thursday, Energy Consumers Australia (ECA) has found an unprecedented plunge in faith in the system.
Today ECA, the peak lobby for household and small business energy users, will release the results of a one-off survey showing confidence suffered its steepest decline since measurements began in 2016.
The results follow a period of turmoil in the national electricity market, which services more than 10 million customers in the eastern states, including South Australia and Tasmania.
Wholesale electricity prices have skyrocketed to the highest levels on record amid surging fossil fuel costs, outages at a number of major coal-fired power plants and cold weather.
Lynne Gallagher, the chief executive of ECA, said confidence collapsed in June when the Australian Energy Market Operator took the extraordinary step of suspending the market to keep the lights on.
'Truly alarming'
Since then, Ms Gallagher said sentiment had continued to deteriorate as increases to household electricity bills began to bite.
"These results show the collapse in consumer confidence we saw in June was not a blip but a serious and ongoing concern," she said.
"In the past month, many Australians will have either received a bill from their electricity or gas retailer or an advice notice telling them how much their bill is likely to rise.
"Consumer concern has moved from something that is abstract to something that is extremely real and is based on actual increases to actual bills."
According to the industry body, barely one in three respondents to the survey believed the system was working in their long-term interests, compared with 44 per cent in July.
The survey, which was conducted in August as a one-off to gauge the effects of the crisis, also showed that the percentage of people who felt they were getting value for money with their electricity fell from 62 per cent to 53 per cent over the same period.
There was a similar fall among gas customers.
Ms Gallagher said the findings were cause for concern.
"These results are truly alarming," Ms Gallagher said.
"Confidence that the market is delivering for consumers has dropped 9 per cent since June of last year and is at its lowest level since 2020.
"During the past month, we have seen a number of strong actions from energy ministers directed at achieving a fast and orderly transition towards 100-per-cent renewables in our system.
"While Australians support the pace of change, they cannot see how the actions taken so far are going to help them with the very real concerns they have about the size of their energy bills right now, and into the future."
'Incredibly regressive'
Adding to consumer concerns, the organisation said, was the rolling nature of price rises.
Since July, bills for millions of customers have leaped across the NEM.
On Thursday, inflation-busting tariff increases will come into effect for many of the 1.7 million customers supplied by big-three retailer EnergyAustralia.
The increases follow a difficult period for the business.
Earlier this month, the Hong Kong-owned company reported a whopping $1.6 billion loss for the first half of the calendar year, citing "unprecedented market volatility" for the reverse.
Joel Gibson, the head of energy consumer advocacy group One Big Switch, said there was little good news in store for households, with the current round of price hikes unlikely to be the last for the year.
Mr Gibson said the failure of successive governments to deliver lasting reform to guide the energy transition had left the wholesale market "a mess".
He said consumers were now "bearing the brunt" of that failure, which would take years to fix.
"Households have become accustomed to this annual calendar where they can expect a price hike … they think it's going to be about maybe 5 to 10 per cent most years," Mr Gibson said.
"That's all been blown out of the water this year — the price hikes for many households are double that.
"Realistically, we can't expect just a single price hike this year … some households will get multiple hikes."
Mr Gibson also lamented what he said was the outsized effect of power price rises on poor and disadvantaged households, saying they were likely to be hit hardest.
He said poorer customers were also often unable to install rooftop solar panels because they could not afford a system or lived in rental properties, meaning they copped a double-whammy.
"The way that we've priced electricity at the moment — not by design, mainly by accident — is incredibly regressive," he said.
"It hits the lower socio-economic demographics the hardest."
Ms Gallagher agreed and called for governments to do more to help those in need.
"The factors driving high prices are going to be in play for the foreseeable future, but just because prices stay high doesn't mean bills have to," she said.
"The best way to deliver lower bills is to provide practical assistance so that Australians can use energy smarter and more efficiently without impacting their quality of life."
