Alternative Energy Suppliers

I enquired into their pricing a couple of years ago. And they were only offering discounts to businesses (it might have been 10% then) and you had to pay by direct debit. No discount to private consumers. So you could do it for the benefit of the environment but not for the benefit of your wallet. Competition. What competition.

Plankmonkey wrote:

what's theirs?

Profit.

I moved to Airtricity in my last house. Found them great to deal with. No hassle changing over the same way it is between the phone companies.

At that time, the prices between ESB and Airtricity was the same.


Current prices are:
http://www.airtricity.ie/ireland/switch_to_airtricity/residential_tariffs/

http://www.esb.ie/main/energy_home/your_esb_bill_tariffs.jsp

craichoe wrote: »

Ah.. Looking at it that way is a bit silly, just because they don't supply a wire to your door from their Wind Generators doesn't mean they don't have to Generate the mW to the grid. Building more infrastructure just to have the 'wire to the door' would be silly. If people weren't using Airtricity then the ESB would have to generate MORE power to supply the Grid.

Since wind is never guaranteed someone has to have emergency back up power equal to the amount of wind power being generated. In order to do this they have to have gas fired power stations idling to take up the slack for when the wind doesn't blow, Turlough Hill doesn't have enough capacity to do this. So the ESB is already burning the gas to make the electricity so it won't lead to any more or less greenhouse gas out put. Which is also why Airtricity aren't cheaper then ESB.

Until we get a full EU power grid with sufficient inter connectors, or till someone inverts a viable way of storing large amounts of energy, green energy isn't very green as there is always a need to have full backup capacity (except for tidal).

burdburd wrote: »

Think of the virtual pool as being a pie chart with different suppliers providing different %'s of the overall power need. Airtricity provides a piece of the pie - the larger piece the greener the overall power generation picture in Ireland.

As I said before, till we have a fully interconnected power grid with the whole of the EU wind energy isn't green. For every kWh of wind power there has to be back up, for some reason people don't like the dark/cold, since in Ireland we only have a very limited amount of hydro power the only spare capacity we have to back up wind is to run a gas fired station 24/7 making no power to cover any drop in output from the green wind turbine.

BTW - I have not seen anyone comment on getting power directly from wind generators. I think power consumers are a bit more savy and despite their electricity being partially green & partially dirt they select to support the green supplier for a variety of reasons.

By extension of your comments one would think that buying a low emmisions car is a waste of time because they are lots of gusslers on the road.

But a gas guzzler is proberly cleaner in a total CO2 cycle as it's already made. Where as your low emmisions car has to manufactured, transported to Ireland, then transported to your dealer. You or your dealer will then have to sort out the disposal of the old car which will have to be transported hundreds/thousands of kms to be recycled. Unless the gas gussler dies a natural death, it's not greener to replace it.

Ever hear of the power of 1 ?

And the people who are telling you this have just bought a brand new fleet of gas gusslers

SectionF wrote: »

Are they not obliged to accept legal tender in payment? Surely people are entitled to use means that don't involve rip-off bank charges?

AFAIK if you don't want to pay ESB by DD when getting a new connection you have to pay a large deposit, I think it was ~€300 a couple of yeards ago. Can't remember the price but it was easier to pay by DD then give them that much cash.

In this day and age you shouldn't be paying bank charges, plenty of free banking available.