Commission for Energy Regulation delivers a kick in the balls to the consumer

mike65

from rte.

The Commission for Energy Regulation has sanctioned a 19.7% average increase in the price of electricity from 1 January.

The increase will vary from 19.4% for domestic users to 19.6% for small and medium enterprises and 21% for large industrial customers.

However, Regulator Tom Reeves has removed tariff regulation from the industrial supply market because of the competition which now exists at that end of the electricity market.

It will allow the top 800 industrial electricity users to shop around independent suppliers for the best price.

The commission blamed the increase on the rising cost of oil and gas.

This time a year ago, it was predicted that natural gas would cost 41c per therm but the actual price has risen by 40% to 58 per therm. Oil has also risen by 36%.

The commission has also formally sanctioned a 34% increase in the price of gas effective from 1 October.

This afternoon's increase is yet another blow to consumers.


Consumer group calls for lower energy taxes

This time last year, the Energy Regulator announced average price hikes of 4% for electricity and 25% for gas.

The National Consumers Agency has called on the Government to reduce taxes on energy, at least as a temporary measure for domestic users, to relieve the burden of the proposed increase in charges.

So whats the point of a regulator if it simply does whats asked of it by the supplier? As we live in a country without any competition for the consumer it might as well be abolished.

My latest leccy bill.

General Units

---

104.51
Standing CHarge

---

10.87
Public Service Obligation Levy----0.81
VAT @13.5%

---

15.69
TOTAL

---

€131.88


Mike.

Wertz

lol and we're trying to keep inflation down?

I don't know how I can cut down my electricity use any further and I only have the gas heating on when absolutely necessary. God help anyone with a lot of kids and all the energy/heat that entails using.

Where are the people who are on the side of the general public in all of this? Far too many vested interests and monopolies operating in this country still...and once again where is the impetus for extending our use of renewable energy sources and domestically sourced fuel?

One more tick in the box on the "Reasons to emigrate" list, on top of house prices, roads/traffic and rip-off service prices...

mike65

Inflation will be hit badly next spring when both the increases feed into the index. The joke is that the government can't loose - as the VAT is a % they make more money. The market has to be opened up, VAT needs to be reduced the PSO Levy abolished. As for the standing charge that should not apply if the service is not being used (when did you last turn the gas Central Heating on?).

Mike.

stereo_steve

Whats the problem?

"Commission for Energy Regulation delivers a kick in the balls to the consumer" Are they supposed to foot the bill of the rising cost of oil?

One way out of this only....go nuclear. The Irish population won't allow it. It's our fault!

mike65

From the CER website

The Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) is the independent body responsible for overseeing the liberalisation of Ireland's energy sector.

The CER is working to ensure that consumers benefit from regulation and the introduction of competition in the energy sector

What liberalisation? What competition?

After careful consideration and examination of BGS application for a tariff increase of 38.35% which represents a revenue requirement of €728.08 million and after taking into consideration all comments received during its consultation process, the Commission has decided to allow BGS €706.38 million in allowable revenue for the NDM Market. This will result in a 33.80% increase in gas tariffs to domestic and small commercial and industrial customers. This direction will take effect from 1st October 2006.

Yes the commission has played hard-ball and denied BordGazprom 22 million in likely turnover.

Mike.

Wertz

mike65 wrote:

As for the standing charge that should not apply if the service is not being used (when did you last turn the gas Central Heating on?).

Yeah being the proud owner of a newly installed gas system early last winter, I was highly amused and perturbed to discover upon sticking my smart card into the meter, that the balance was -€30, even though the gas has been on twice since last april....a call to bord gáis informed me of a puzzling system where I get charged for a service and a product I'm not using. As dirty and expensive as coal was, at least I wasn't being charged by my coal man for having a bunker half full of coal over the summer...

Couldn't agree more on the VAT charges...but no way in hell they'll kill the cash cow...a lot like stamp duty.

partholon

guess this means i'll be turning off the computer in future

Akrasia

i heard yer man on the radio and he said something that really pissed me off. the ESB made a 200 million euro profit last year and when Matt cooper said that maybe they should absorb some of their cost increases, the regulator said that he had to keep the price above a certail level or else no competition will enter the market.

What the hell?!!! isn't the point of competition that it will lead to a reduction in prices or that it's more efficient than state enterprise. Instead we're being forced to pay for higher prices to allow for large enough profits that will attract new entrants into the market.

gandalf

Another to add to the Governments long list of failures...absolutely pathetic.

ircoha

gandalf wrote:

Another to add to the Governments long list of failures...absolutely pathetic.

What do you suggest they do?
You saw what happened to the Ukraine.
The sooner it doubles again in price the better so as we can get serious about conservation and self sufficiency.

Cork

gandalf wrote:

Another to add to the Governments long list of failures...absolutely pathetic.

The regulator incresed prices.

The regulator is independent.

Control is out of the political sphere.

There are many regulators - eg. Taxi, energy, communications etc.

All such regulators are Indenpendent.

Independent of government or sectoral interest.

Rising prices will hit our economy and people, especially on fixed income such as pensioners.

mike65

Well the price hikes have already had me one-line looking for wool insulation. Found an Irish site here which I'll be using once I've measured the joist gap width in the roof!

Mike.

ircoha

mike65 wrote:

Well the price hikes have already had me one-line looking for wool insulation. Found an Irish site here which I'll be using once I've measured the joist gap width in the roof!

Mike.

Put plenty on when u are at it, if u have the room

LostinBlanch

Cork wrote:

The regulator incresed prices.

The regulator is independent.

Nope he was just created to give the government a fig leaf, so they could say he was independent when in effect he has been nothing of the sort. He has been pandering to state owned monopolies, which is why people are complaining about him doing all the energy monopolies bidding.

Cork wrote:

Control is out of the political sphere.

See my first sentence above.

Cork wrote:

Cork wrote:

There are many regulators - eg. Taxi, energy, communications etc.

Hmmm, lets see energy regulator gives state owned monopolies increases measures in multiples of the rate of inflation whenever they ask for them. Comreg allowed Eircon (former state owned monopoly then Tony O'Reilly owned monopoly <in real terms>) to charge usurious rates for line rental supposedly to allow for further "investment" in the phone system. Has done very little of effect to bring proper competition into place. Allows broadband penetration to practically stall and endanger economic prosperity. Notice any pattern there?

Ger Deering has been given the go ahead to take on the taxi drivers becaue they aren't / weren't a state owned monopoly, or don't represent vested enough interests.

Cork wrote:

Rising prices will hit our economy and people, especially on fixed income such as pensioners.

Nice quote, kind of reminds me of Health cuts hurt the aged, the sick and the poor. Any idea which party's slogan that was? :rolleyes:

metrovelvet

Just wait till winter comes, pneumonia strikes, chest infections strike and the hospitals will be in an even further crisis. This is the dumbest decision Ive seen in a long time. Wow.

Delboy05

why does'nt the regulator tackle costs within esb, in exchange for price rises.... average wage within ESB is over 70k, twice the national average...I mean for fcuks sake.
I doubt they even have to pay towards their pensions either....

mike65

ESB workers conditons have always been the best in the semi-state sector.

from Sunday business post

The ESB has agreed a landmark €90 million deal with staff to plug the hole in the company's pension scheme and kick-start talks on a new programme of reform at the company.

Staff at the state-owned company are to receive a special pay allowance of €1,000 each to boost their own pension contributions over the next four years. As well as this, all 8,000 workers at the company will receive a once-off lump sum of €3,000 for agreeing to enter talks on the new programme for change. This will cost the company €24million.

edit

A spokesman for the ESB said the company was satisfied with the agreement.

“It was difficult and arduous to reach, but it brings to an end a long and difficult period of negotiations,” he said.

The final deal represents a substantial departure from the union's opening demand for an 18 per cent hike in pay and an increase to the employee share option scheme from 5 per cent to 20 per cent.

Trade union sources said the move to non-pensionable lump sums marked a radical “cultural change in the way the ESB conducts its business'‘.

The €3,000 lump sum to all staff was made with “the implicit agreement that staff, for the first time, must accept the principal of non-superannuated pay increases in return for future change,” said an informed source. “That affects a significant number of people over the age of 50 years looking at a pension within the next 15 years.”

Former employees benefited from as much as half of all previous pay agreements which were superannuated.


ESB workers are among the best paid in the public sector.

The average pensionable pay is €50,000, the company said.

This rises to €67,000 when overtime is taken into account.

The company said it did not have figures to confirm that the average non-pensionable pay including overtime at one power station, Poolbeg in Dublin, was €140,000.

Mike.

SeanW

stereo_steve wrote:

Whats the problem?

"Commission for Energy Regulation delivers a kick in the balls to the consumer" Are they supposed to foot the bill of the rising cost of oil?

One way out of this only....go nuclear. The Irish population won't allow it. It's our fault!

Stereo Steve has it in one: If Ireland had nuclear power, we'd have a much smaller Greenhouse gas emissions, and we wouldn't be so reliant on fossil fuels for electricity and therefore be experiencing less pain now. And it's only going to get worse.

Nuclear power is safe, clean, plentiful, predictable baseline load energy. And the technology's getting better all the time.

Cork

Energy costs have risen.

Price rises are not unexpected.

My main problem here is energy prices in other countrys are not rising as fast.

We will loose competitiveness.

Pensioners will be hit the hardest.

Mick86

Your local TDs will be knocking on your door very shortly. Explain to them exactly why they aren't getting your vote.

gandalf

Oh don't worry I am looking forward to the weasels when they come crawling around.

stereo_steve

Why?

Have you not noticed that fuel prices have been going up? Have you noticed that we are an island? We are the very last part of a very long gas pipeline. It costs more to get fuel here.

Oil is and always has been a finite resource, the less of it there is the more expensive it gets. What do you want the government to do? Make it magically cheaper?

Of course ESB made 200million last year. They own about 20 power stations (off the top of my head). If you want competition in Ireland this is the price to pay. Why would any company build a power station for hardly any profit. They are only going to receive 1/20 of this and power stations are not cheap to construct.

I guarantee the reason Veridian are building their new plant in Finglas is a result of this.

So gandalf when your local weasel calls around you should say. "I want a nuclear power station". The ways things are going, I wouldn't be surprised to see our current electricity prices doubling in ten years if not sooner.

Cork

Mick86 wrote:

Your local TDs will be knocking on your door very shortly. Explain to them exactly why they aren't getting your vote.

Because our TDs are responsible for fuel prices.

Rising fuel costs is effecting economies worldwide.

stereo_steve

Cork,

I've noticed your posts a couple of times and I always laugh when i see your avatar. It just looks dirty! I know its completely innocent...

What is that red thing in his hand?

Macker

stereo_steve wrote:

Cork,

I've noticed your posts a couple of times and I always laugh when i see your avatar. It just looks dirty! I know its completely innocent...

What is that red thing in his hand?

It's a cookie monster ....have a guess

We picked a good time to be giving all our Atlantic gas away for nothing ,by the time it reaches dry land it will have quadrupled in price :mad:

Cork

stereo_steve wrote:

Cork,

I've noticed your posts a couple of times and I always laugh when i see your avatar. It just looks dirty! I know its completely innocent...

What is that red thing in his hand?

Changed it to another version without the cookie.

Wertz

Macker wrote:

We picked a good time to be giving all our Atlantic gas away for nothing ,by the time it reaches dry land it will have quadrupled in price :mad:

Got it in one.

Our country's policy of selling off (or giving away) anything that looks even semi-profitable in the present will turn around and bite us on the arse. Fair enough, we need multinational companies to set up drilling operations and that takes a fair sized captial investment....but why isn't the revenue generated by the sales of drilling rights used to offset energy commodity prices? Hell, why not even insist on some clause in the contract to guarantee most if not all of the resource to be sold domestically?

As for the nuclear argument? There's a long thread on here someplace about the pros and cons...one of the cons is a huge initial set-up cost that, going on past experience in Ireland, would be ultimately borne by the consumer. We won't even mention that nuclear fuel itself is both costly and not in as much abundance as people assume...

partholon

Wertz wrote:

Got it in one.

Our country's policy of selling off (or giving away) anything that looks even semi-profitable in the present will turn around and bite us on the arse. Fair enough, we need multinational companies to set up drilling operations and that takes a fair sized captial investment....but why isn't the revenue generated by the sales of drilling rights used to offset energy commodity prices? Hell, why not even insist on some clause in the contract to guarantee most if not all of the resource to be sold domestically??

in other words, why dont we do it the way they do in denmark? guess you'd have to ask bertie and rambo, they did the deal!

as to nuclear, dont make me laugh. the island has a popultion less than manchester. we dont need that much power. particularly considering we're an island nation with territorial waters four times the size on the island.

we should be seeding a quater of that with enough 1 meg wave power generators for every man woman and child on the island and flogging the surplus to europe . honestly the rest of europe would kill for our natural resources, the only place with more energy in its sea is off the northern tip of antartica!. we dont have a lack of power in this county, just imagination and will in our politicians to exploit it. for gods sake the guy who invented this type of wave generator is an irish guy and the gov wont back him. poor fecker is having to go to the danes for investment:rolleyes:

LostinBlanch

partholon wrote:

in other words, why dont we do it the way they do in denmark? guess you'd have to ask bertie and rambo, they did the deal!
QUOTE]

Ah yes Burke going into a room alone with representatives from Shell. The same Shell that has acknowledged biribing officials in the past; and the same Rambo imprisoned for obstructing tribunals. Voila the room clears and Shell etc walk away with our gas and oil resources for nothing. Of course only a cynic would suggest that if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it probably is a duck.

Aidan1

Except it doesn't look like a duck.

in other words, why dont we do it the way they do in denmark?

Because Denmark is completely different country, with very different prospectivity. They are net exporters of petroleum products, for a start. When you have access to that type of resources, you can afford to be snotty. We can't.

All this talk about our suposedly 'massive' resources is laughable when you consider that, of around 120 exploratory wells drilled over the last 40 years, we have had two medium sized strikes (Kinsale, which has paid royalties from day one - and Corrib, smaller again, which has yet to yield anything) and two very minor strikes, Seven Heads and Ballycotton, that were only commercial because of their proximity to the Kinsale infrastructure.

The royalties were changed (by Government decision remember) because companies had stopped prospecting in Irish waters. Unsurprising considering that both the UK and Norway had also dropped their royalties previously, and both of these territories are historically much better options for exploration. When, or if, people start to find these 'huuuuuuge' finds that boards posters are so sure are out there, then the royalties can be changed. For the moment, its much more important that these hydrocarbons are found in the first place.

Wertz

Where does anyone use the term "massive" in relation to resources? The point is that there are resources and rights to them are being squandered for short term gain. No-one knows what's out there and no-one on here is claiming to...the point is that if there is, we already sold our share as it were...

As for drilling dry wells? That's the nature of the business...the multinationals have that all figured into their costing....and they wouldn't be here if they thought it wasn't going to yield to them on the long term.
I suppose the reason Shell is going to all the bother of trying to get that pipeline up and running is for the sheer hell of it?

None of that changes the fact that in terms of our energy usage, very little seems to be getting done on the renewable end of things, to try and cut down on our over-dependency on fossil fuel, be it domestic or imported...sure you can't sell the wind and the waves to multinationals...and you sure as hell can't charge VAT on them...

John_C

partholon wrote:

we're an island nation with territorial waters four times the size on the island.

we should be seeding a quater of that with enough 1 meg wave power generators for every man woman and child on the island and flogging the surplus to europe . honestly the rest of europe would kill for our natural resources, the only place with more energy in its sea is off the northern tip of antartica!. we dont have a lack of power in this county, just imagination and will in our politicians to exploit it. for gods sake the guy who invented this type of wave generator is an irish guy and the gov wont back him. poor fecker is having to go to the danes for investment:rolleyes:

I agree, we should put all our eggs into one experimental basket, it's bound to work.

We have to vote the government out. There are all these 'magic pill' solutions to the countries problems which they're ignoring for no well defined reason.

SeanW

partholon wrote:

as to nuclear, dont make me laugh. the island has a popultion less than manchester. we dont need that much power. particularly considering we're an island nation with territorial waters four times the size on the island.

Nuclear power, in addition to being safe, clean, almost CO2 emissions free, reliable and strategically secure, is also very scalable.

Conventional reactors go as low as 600 MegaWatts. What's more, Toshiba's come out with a nice little "micro-nuke" of 10 MegaWatts that can more or less be used anywhere.

BTW if you haven't done so, you should look at the EirGrid Portal. Our national power demand ranges wildly from 2 GigaWatts in Summer nighttimes, to 4.5 GigaWatts in winter. There's more than enough scope to add a GW or two of safe, clean, nuclear power, in addition to renewables, biofuels etc.

Also, wind plant output varies dramatically from time to time.

So gandalf when your local weasel calls around you should say. "I want a nuclear power station".

I am actually half-tempted to do this

mike65

Bump for a drop!

You have no doubt noticed the prices for oil (and gas) have fallen steadily in recent weeks, oil is trading at 63 dollars from a high of about $77 while gas is also down. If this trend continues I look foward to prices charged by ESB and Bord Gas to drop next spring (yeah right!).

edit. Just checked it looks like prices are reviewed only once a year!

Mike.

LostinBlanch

And reviewed upwards only. :mad:

gandalf

Remember it when the Government candidates come crawling to your door next year.

mike65

The commisoner is on RTE radio 1 right now.

Mike.

mike65

Bump for an investigation by the Competition Authority

from examiner

25/10/2006 - 11:55:10 AM

Competition body to probe electricity and gas price rises

The Competition Authority is to investigate Ireland's soaring electricity and gas prices.

Bord Gais introduced a 34% price hike for consumers at the beginning of October, while ESB prices are also set to go up in January.

The Competition Authority plans to publish a consultation paper on the issue before December.

Mike.