"In some communities we are talking over 100 per cent increases in charges," said Mayor Shaw.

With support from Local Government NSW, Councils have banded together and sought specialist advice to try and get some common sense into the pricing review now underway.

"It's particularly disturbing when street lights were part of the electricity asset strip in rural NSW. Communities used to own the electricity assets. Now people in regional NSW are being asked to pay even more and the State pockets the profits. It's not so much about paying an electricity bill as paying an electricity tax," said Mayor Shaw.

"It's has been very challenging.  The claims being made by Essential Energy are part of piece of work filled with technical information and we really needed to get expert help. We only had a few weeks to pull it all together, but what we have found should inspire the Australian

Energy Regulator to take a good hard and independent look at what we believe to be unfair and just plain wrong," said Mayor Shaw.

"This mean millions of dollars to regional NSW which is money that could be better spent elsewhere, on a road or a library book," said Mayor Shaw.

The technical review identified a number of substantive reasons to  reject Essential Energy's claims for a price rise.  It found evidence suggesting that Essential Energy is not managing its street lighting maintenance and technology choices efficiently.  The utility has also been particularly slow to take up new more reliable, more energy efficient and lower cost lighting options such as LEDs.  

Essential Energy service levels were also found to be substantially below urban

areas and not meeting the basic requirements of the NSW Public Lighting Code more than eight years after it was introduced.

Councils have called for the Australian Energy Regulator to reject Essential Energy's proposal for dramatic price increases and are calling for a complete review by Essential Energy of how it is managing the street lighting service.