Things Are Back To "Normal"

Trish arrived home Sunday afternoon, tired but happy after a visit to family down south in Melbourne.  She brought photos and movies of Kim's new flat in St Kilda and very positive comments regarding the purchase from a local Real Estate agent.  It was an excellent buy!

Trish was really positive about it as well.  A 'crew' of friends were assembled to help with the move in to the new address last Saturday.  Trish says the flat's position is excellent, possibly even closer to the main drag than her earlier address.  Kim bought a flight up to visit us sometime ago and it is due this weekend.  She will spend a couple of nights with us up here this weekend.  I guess she will be keen to get back home again now.

After a couple of loads of washing yesterday Trish has settled back in again.  She had a Committee Meeting Monday afternoon and I had a Community Association Committee Meeting last night.  I was keen to get home from my meeting as there was a rare AFL match on TV live from Perth as well.

The weather both Sunday and Monday was perfect SE Queensland winter weather, top of around 23 or so and a low around 12.  There was not a cloud in the sky!  It is a similar day today.

Lots of talk in this part of Australia regarding electricity prices with 22% price hike due to arrive on July 1st.  When the guy upgraded the meter here recently he left without saying anything.  I decided to use the internet and found a page explaining how the new meter should work.  It had three sections, 01 the energy I had used from the network, 30 which showed the energy I had used from 'reduced' off peak and Tariff 33 rates, and 40 which showed energy my Solar System had put back into the network for which I would receive 16c per kwh.

My meter never had section 40 so I thought it may 'kick in' when we had put a little more solar power back into the system.

So today I rang my energy company AGL and asked about my concern.  They suggested any fault would be picked up automatically and would be fixed by the supplier Energex.  I decided to ring the installer just in case there was a problem there.  I was advised something definitely was wrong and it was suggested I ring Energex immediately and report it.

The young lass at Energex who answered the phone was excellent and reported that the solar system installer had failed to notify them that the solar had been installed so the new meter was not programmed to handle it.  It was OK for the solar power I used but did not record any power my system had put back into the network.

I made a quick call back to the installer and within 15 minutes I had received two emails from Energex saying a works order had been prepared to reprogram the meter box!

Fortunately I had gone to the trouble to check the internet regarding the new meter.  Otherwise I would have been oblivious to the error.  As we only get 16c for every kwh we put back into the system we have not suffered a substantial loss in the 10 days it hasn't been operating.