The Tasmanian Government knows just how important the cost of living is to Tasmanians and that’s why we have worked to ensure our regulated energy prices for Tasmanians have remained the lowest or among the lowest in the nation.
Last year, households received a 7.11 per cent reduction in regulated electricity prices, and small businesses received an 11 per cent drop and over the past seven years, in real terms, regulated energy prices have decreased by 18 per cent for residential customers and decreased by over 27 per cent for small business customers.
However, we know Tasmanians continue to face real challenges when it comes to cost of living pressures and the Tasmanian Government is working to do what it can to alleviate those within the tools available to it.
Following today’s release of the Independent Office of the Tasmanian Economic Regulator’s final price determination for 2022, the Tasmanian Government has requested Aurora Energy to remove the cost of delivering the Aurora+ app to Tasmanian customers from its total cost to serve from July 1 2022.
What this means is that Aurora will not proceed with implementing Aurora+ element of the total cost to serve as outlined in today’s Economic Regulator determination, meaning those Tasmanians who do not yet use that service, will not pay any more on their bills from 1 July.
The Aurora+ app is designed to give customers more insight and control over their electricity usage which is an incredibly important tool to help Tasmanians better understand and manage their power usage and mitigate bill shock.
It remains an important tool for Tasmanians to address cost of living pressures and Aurora Energy will embark on an education campaign about its importance and how to access it over the coming months.
Aurora will continue to charge consumers for the use of the Aurora+ app as it has been doing on a user pays basis, with the App’s take-up and impact to be reviewed in 12 months’ time.