AGL’s use of 'huge' market clout costs consumers $3b a year: report

AGL's dominance of the electricity sector after it bought up two former NSW government coal-fired power plants allowed it to lift market-wide wholesale prices to the tune of $3 billion a year when another rival producer closed.

AGL's Liddell power station (foreground) with the cooling
 towers of the firm's sister plant, Bayswater - both bought
from the NSW government in 2014.

The 2014 privatisation of the Liddell and Bayswater plants in the Hunter Valley means AGL generates 29 per cent of the electricity in the National Electricity Market. That oversized share allowed it to push up prices by holding back supply once Victoria's Hazelwood plant shut in March 2017, a report by the Victoria Energy Policy Centre has found.

Read the story from The Age by Peter Hannam - “AGL’s use of 'huge' market clout costs consumers $3b a year: report.”