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Blog: Empower your clients to understand their energy use with our free course
Australia’s energy system exists to serve the community, underpinning much of our lives through heating and cooling our homes, powering medical equipment, cooking food and powering our transport.
Energy is an essential service, but as you may already know from working with your clients, the energy market itself can create or exacerbate vulnerabilities and hardship. Bills can be difficult to understand, and the factors contributing to the cost of electricity can be wide-ranging – from inefficient or faulty appliances, or a bad energy deal from a provider.
That’s why, in partnership with the Department of Energy and Public Works, we have developed a free course on our Community Door eTraining platform to help you get more acquainted with the energy market in Queensland.
Over five modules, the course examines:
- Queensland’s energy supply chain, including who is involved, what they do, and who people can call if they need to talk to someone about their electricity.
- The consumer rights and responsibilities of energy consumers, and what you can do if you need to make a complaint. Outages, disconnections and an explanation of the Guaranteed Service Level Payments are also covered here.
- Understanding energy usage unpacks how consumers are charged for energy, how it can be used more efficiently, and how small changes in behaviour can really help people save money.
- Reading and understanding energy bills really digs in to what is on an electricity bill, providing you with the information needed to support clients to read and understand not only their bills, but their energy usage as well; and
- Concessions, payment difficulties and hardship details the schemes and supports available to your clients who may be unable to afford their bills. It also looks at how not paying energy bills can impact a person’s credit rating.
If this sounds like something that could assist you in your work, sign up for a free account on Community Door eTraining today and enrol in this course! You can work through the material at your own pace, and once completed you will receive a downloadable certificate.
While you’re there, make sure you take a look at some of our other course offerings.
Don’t forget – we also maintain a suite of resources in our Energy and water section to help you provide assistance to clients who may be struggling with their electricity bills, including quick and easy factsheets on reading bills, what to do if you can’t pay, consumer rights if you are facing disconnection, and many more.