Pre-paid energy users forgotten in pandemic

The Australia Government introduced policies to keep the energy running, like moratoriums on electricity disconnections. And they worked.

But Australians who pay their energy bills in advance were not protected, and many households had to make the hard choice to disconnect, a study from the Australian National University (ANU) found.

The majority of Australians pay for energy after they've used it, but Indigenous communities in Northern Australia widely use pre-paid energy through Smart Meters.

Poorly insulated houses without air-conditioning became uninhabitable in the beating heat of the Tanami Desert, the report's co-author Dr Simon Quilty said.

Those reliant on life-saving medical devices, like dialysis machines, have suffered "immeasurable" damage to their health from energy disconnection, the Northern Territory doctor said.

Pre-paying energy is a common practice in many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in remote Australia including in north-west Western Australia, off-grid parts of Queensland and the remote Northern Territory.

The prepay system has been widely used since the early 1990s in northern Australia.

Utility companies use the prepay system so they don't carry the risk of outstanding debts, according to the ANU study.

Customers use the system to avoid running up unsustainable debts and expensive disconnection and reconnection fees, the study said.

"The prepay system lets deeply impoverished people choose between electricity and food when they get down to their last dollar," Dr Quilty said.

Without the money to pay in advance for energy, households go without.

This practice of "self-disconnection" means energy insecurity in indigenous communities is not monitored, the study found.

Most prepayment systems use Smart Meters, also known as pay-as-you-use meters.

Residents charge their cards at participating supermarkets and service stations.

To keep energy flowing during the lockdowns, residents had to leave their homes to top up the pre-paid meter.

Disconnection rates skyrocketed, along with temperatures, the study found.

While visiting Lajamanu, a remote community 560 kilometres south-west of Katherine, Dr Quilty said temperatures reached 40 degrees before 10am every day he spent there.

By the midday, the temperatures could rise another ten degrees, he said.

"There's extreme humidity as well - it is unbelievably hot."

The community's houses are over-crowded and "very poorly constructed, maintained and insulated," he said.

Many of the houses in these indigenous communities don't have insulation in the walls and roof, meaning the ambient heat grows throughout the day.

Due to the construction and insulation of these government-provided homes, temperatures inside are often hotter than outside, Dr Quilty said.

"The houses become like ovens, like a car parked in the sun on a very hot day."

"To air condition such poorly designed buildings is incredibly expensive - three or four times the cost of cooling a well-constructed building," he said.

The knock-on effects from energy insecurity can drive people "further into poverty," he said.

Frequent energy disconnection means "Australia most vulnerable" patients can't rely on electric medical equipment, the study found.

"These disruptions to power come at an enormous and completely unseen health cost," Dr Quilty said.

"And you can imagine what frequent power disconnection does to the contents of a fridge," he said.

Energy insecurity helped COVID-19 pass through these communities.

"There were houses with 15 or 20 people living together," Dr Quilty said.

"They might have a couple of positive cases in the house, the power goes off and everybody moves into another house," he said.

"It's not possible to stay in the hot house, so the virus spreads."

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, income support payments and policies to cement energy access were rolled out across Australia.

These policies were to designed to help people to stay home during lengthy periods of lockdown and quarantine.

The Australian Energy Regulator said they had "reasonable expectations of energy companies to protect householders and small business customers during the COVID-19 pandemic" in late March 2020.

They called for utility companies to "make their best efforts" to avoid disconnecting energy from a household.

But pre-paid customers weren't offered this grace.

The ANU study said these supports "largely excluded or bypassed more than 10,000 Indigenous households using prepay".

Energy insecurity remained "unrelentingly high" for indigenous communities during the pandemic and with inflation, may now be worse, Dr Quilty said.

"The inflationary pressures over the past few years has driven poverty beyond the breadline to the point of starvation," he said.

"That's something mainstream Australia hasn't got it's head around - inflation hit incredibly hard in remote communities."

Inflation has raised the prices of groceries and fuel, driving "many households beyond the brink," Dr Quilty said.

Warumungu Elder Norman Frank Jupurrurla has solar panels installed on his Tennant Creek home.

"Before the panels were installed, Norm disconnected from power around 15 times per year," Dr Quilty said.

"After the panels were put on, he hasn't disconnected once."

If you fly into Alice Springs, you'll see many of the rooftops have solar and the ones that don't are the town camps, Dr Quilty said.

"In the Northern Territory, where we have endless sunshine, we can't get it together to equip our first nations houses with solar panels - because there's no appetite for it," he said.

Equipping these homes with solar panels would run to around $5,000 to $10,000 each, potentially cheaper if rolled out as a widespread scheme, Dr Quilty said.

The return on investment would take around three years, he said.

The Northern Territory Government has been contacted for comment but had not responded by time of publication.