Distributed renewables and energy storage are now the cheapest form of baseload power and if Western Australia's remote areas can benefit from that, we can all benefit, argues David Martin, founder of energy trading platform provider Power Ledger.

In Western Australia, whether you live in a metropolitan area or miles out of town - you pay the same price for electricity.

The same price. This is despite the fact it costs significantly more to supply electricity in regional areas compared to inner city, not to mention reliability issues households have with power in the bush.

The flat pricing structure is due to the Western Australian Government’s Uniform Tariff Policy, which effectively shifts costs from expensive, under-utilised rural infrastructure to the profitable urban networks.

This means any policy debate about lowering the cost of electricity, needs to consider ways of reducing the cost of powering regional areas.

For example, in Power Ledger’s homestate of Western Australia, there is an explicit subsidy paid to major regional electricity retailer Horizon Power to cover the cost of the uniform tariff in remote and regional networks.

However, it has often proved cheaper, safer and more reliable to disconnect rural customers from the grid and supply them with standalone systems than it is to operate, maintain or even replace rural networks altogether.

Reducing the cost of grid connection one-customer-at-a-time is a worthy ambition but one that’s likely to take decades before it materially addresses the broader cost of supply. But there is another, faster way of reducing the cost of supply in rural areas and technology change is putting it well within reach.