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Electricity prices

blue5000

Just wondering where people are getting the best deals. We are with airtricity and the standing charges alone are €300 a year. 23.4 cent day rate and 11.6 night rate. Anyone using flogas, 18.8 and 9.1 night rate is the cheapest we've found online, anything better out there? Maybe the dairy lads are getting better quotes?

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cute geoge

I just switched trough bonkers probably just did not email energia back when they sent me email to confirm I was joining them for paperless billing .you have get calculator to check discount rate because I could not see where the 41% was.There night rate has a limit at discount price but this is 1000 units a mounth so would not be over it much

[Deleted User]

I only recently discovered night rate hours are at the moment 2am to 9am

When the clocks go back at the end of next month that will be 1 am to 8am

The 9am in summer is handy

Night rate is 7 hours

We have an ice cooler that was building ice midnight to 4am on the mistaken belief that the compressors were running at night rate

Most of that ice was built at full day rates

So adjust your timers accordingly folks

Western Pomise

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958194#Comment_117958194

Thanks for reply.....so are you referring to your current bill you get and how it has discount quoted on it?....How would you check the discount %?.....just get the calculator out or contact Energia to get them to check it iykwim?

How can you opt to still get Paper bill with Bonkers.ie?

Western Pomise

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958198#Comment_117958198

Thanks Whelan.....funnily enough the Energia Salesman forgot to tell me that!.....

whelan2

Energia have a cap on units used at discounted price. Gone with electric Ireland here last week through bonkers

cute geoge

I get the paper bill from energia ,go with bonkers and you still can get the paper bill ,the bill will show you units used at full cost with the discount under it without showing the actual % discount so you better check this out when you get the bill .The discount runs out after 12 months so you switch to someone else or else bargain and renew with energia

Western Pomise

With all the talk of electricity price hikes I said I would stick this up here.....we are with Energia for last 3 or 4 years....have to admit I would not be the greatest for keeping up with best offers,a door to door Energia salesman called to the house the other day,we get paper bills and pay by direct debit.....call me old fashioned but I like to get the bill into my hand to see what's going out:)

Basically he said to show him a recent bill.....have separate Farm and House bills.....he said he was signing up 'new' customers at a 27% discount in the area but you had to go to paperless billing.....and that really best he could do for us was a 10% discount with paperless billing.....but that if we rang Energia ourselves quoting our MPRN we could say our neighbours got 27% off and we expect same or we are going to leave them.

Just popped onto Bonkers.ie and inputted our details and a 'one year retention' paperless deal from Energia comes in with a 41% discount.It says that it factors in the upcoming Energia price increase on 18th October to savings figure of €650 that we would get on house bill.

Is this typical of the kind of discounts the electricity companies offer you to stay with them?.....wondering to myself if it's worth me ringing Energia or will I just go with the Bonkers.ie deal.

KCross

Hard Knocks wrote: »

Can you give a link to the monitor
Do you just plug in or do you need it installed

Something like these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Efergy-Technologies-ELITE-CLASSIC-4-0/dp/B001Q1G4WK/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Efergy-Wireless-CT-Transmitter-White/dp/B010BP7K5G/

I dont have those myself so Im not recommending those exact ones, its just an example but they all work on similar principle.... There is no install/wiring required. You just put the clamp around your incoming mains cable in your meter box and it captures and stores all the data which you can then review from the reports on a daily/weekly/monthly basis via an App.

A low tech alternative is take regular readings of your day/night meter. Anything used by day is obviously what you would be trying to offset with SolarPV.
Its not as good as having the energy monitor as you dont know if your day usage is bunched up in a couple of hours in the morning or if there is a wide spread of usage across the day... the energy monitor will give you that info and that would feed into decisions around where to place your panels (East-West or all South etc).

J.O. Farmer

mahoney_j wrote: »

If u just submit a meter reading monthly and keep track of it yourself is this not the same and cutting the expense

I think it must track when you use most during the day. You could monitor your meter several times a day and you might have a good idea anyway on a dairy farm when peak demand is.

MAULBROOK

Good loser wrote: »

I get a big low usage charge from Electric Irl at times.

Do some providers not have this?

Only EI, do you have solar?

MAULBROOK

whelan2 wrote: »

The only down side with energia is there's a cap on the amount of units at the reduced price. So if you use alot of electricity you won't be saving much

Cool I have solar so that works for me.

mahoney_j

Hard Knocks wrote: »

Can you give a link to the monitor
Do you just plug in or do you need it installed

If u just submit a meter reading monthly and keep track of it yourself is this not the same and cutting the expense

Hard Knocks

KCross wrote: »

As I mentioned above, an energy monitor over one summer to see what your usage is like and then a Solar installer to guide you on what is best to match that.!

Can you give a link to the monitor
Do you just plug in or do you need it installed

KCross

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

With solar, is there an ideal roof slope and direction to face it in?

Like most things... depends!

To get the max generation it would be ~30° angle South facing.

However, its not always best to position your panels for max generation.
For example, dairy farmers would be milking early morning and late afternoon so it would be better in that case to split your panels to two arrays, one facing east and one facing west. You'll get less generated overall but more of it will be generated at the time you need it.... i.e. more self consumption, which is what you should aim for.

If you have one array all facing south you will get a massive spike around midday when all panels are generating at their max and you might not be able to use it all and then you are relying on the Feed-in-tariff to pay you for the excess. Splitting into two arrays will reduce the peak you get but will give you more early morning and late evening generation when you are better able to use it.

There is no one right solution. It depends on your usage, what sheds you have etc.

As I mentioned above, an energy monitor over one summer to see what your usage is like and then a Solar installer to guide you on what is best to match that.

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

And would there be any issues with additional weight on the roof?

If installed correctly, no, unless the roof is ready to fall in already!

The panels are not particularly heavy.

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Just thinking about setting up buildings to maximise efficiency if I was to ever go down that road. I presume it would be an ideal setup for hydrogen if we start to see them become commercialised

There are some plans to generate Hydrogen using excess renewable in the country in Cork and Shannon. Not sure its something farmers need to be worried about though! You need masses of power for that!

If you are interested in Solar PV you need to be thinking along the lines of utilising as much of what you generate as you can. Thats the best bang for the buck!

yosemitesam1

KCross wrote: »

Its a little off-topic but its worth a reply.

Any farmer, particularly dairy, who has some capital to spend now for a long term gain should take a serious look at Solar PV.

Dairy farmers, in particular, because the sun is shining most at the time that dairy farms have the ability to utilise it (self-consumption is critically important for ROI), which is ~10:00-19:00 during the summer months..... what with plate coolers, bulk tanks, milking machine, compressors, hot water, water pumps etc. In addition farmers have loads of wide open roof space with no shading which is quite important to maximise the output. Ideally south facing.

There are several threads in the Renewable forum that you should look at for costs and consider getting some installers out to quote you.
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=117396876

As for your ROI question... thats a very difficult one to answer definitively as it depends on what exactly you go for and what your usage profile is like.
e.g. How many panels, what direction they are facing, how much of the electricity you can use, have you got batteries, have you got 3-phase... lots of variables but the payback should be, for a dairy farmer, somewhere around 5-7yrs. After that its money in the bank and SolarPV has no moving parts or servicing required. It either works or it doesnt. The panels are good for decades (25+ years). The weak link is the inverter which will die eventually (10 year warranty usually) but they are relatively cheap (€hundreds) to replace.

Alot of farms have their electricity supply connected to their house in which case you'd be able to apply for the domestic SolarPV grant
https://www.seai.ie/grants/home-energy-grants/solar-electricity-grant/

Im not sure if you can apply for a grant if the farm supply is separate but you dont need the grant to make it viable and I'm sure you'd be able to claim other tax reliefs since it is a capital expenditure.

Finally, as a headsup, there is a Feed-In-Traiff coming in the next month or so. A FiT is where you get paid for any generation that you dont use. That energy gets sent to the grid and at the moment Eirgrid get to use it for free!

There will be a new microgeneration scheme put in place next month which will allow you to get paid for the unused energy... probably around the night rate value. It requires the installation of a smart meter which might be a double edged sword as the rates so far on smart meters are higher than standard day/night tariffs. If that occurs then you just let it go to the grid for free and do your best to use it all by dumping the excess to heat hot water or any other means possible (timing ice generators etc).

Come on over to the renewable forum for further discussion, there are some farmers over there!

With solar, is there an ideal roof slope and direction to face it in? And would there be any issues with additional weight on the roof?
Just thinking about setting up buildings to maximise efficiency if I was to ever go down that road. I presume it would be an ideal setup for hydrogen if we start to see them become commercialised

KCross

J.O. Farmer wrote: »

Didn't realise batteries would have that much power. I was more thinking of hours and you could have the battery fairly well run down before you realise it's running off the car.

For perspective...
EV's nowadays have between 60-100kWh's of available energy.
An average domestic house in Ireland would use about ~10kWh's per day. Every house is different of course, but it gives you an idea.

J.O. Farmer

KCross wrote: »

Technically yes.
But new EV's would have a battery that would power an average house for many many days... maybe even weeks, so it would want to be one hell of a power cut.

The longest power cut I've had was storm Ophelia and I was down for 5 days.... an EV would have powered the house for that time period no problem. Most power cuts in reality are a few hours, maybe a day or two.

And nobody is stopping you from disconnecting the car from the house. Pick your poison, lights in the house or the ability to drive somewhere.

You could also let the car run down just to a point where you could get to a nearby charger that does have power and charge the car up for 30mins and come back to your house to power it away again for another few days!

Didn't realise batteries would have that much power. I was more thinking of hours and you could have the battery fairly well run down before you realise it's running off the car.

KCross

J.O. Farmer wrote: »

Sounds great but what happens if the power goes and doesn't come back for hours could you end up stranded at home because your house has flattened the cars battery.

Technically yes.
But new EV's would have a battery that would power an average house for many many days... maybe even weeks, so it would want to be one hell of a power cut.

The longest power cut I've had was storm Ophelia and I was down for 5 days.... an EV would have powered the house for that time period no problem. Most power cuts in reality are a few hours, maybe a day or two.

And nobody is stopping you from disconnecting the car from the house. Pick your poison, lights in the house or the ability to drive somewhere.

You could also let the car run down just to a point where you could get to a nearby charger that does have power and charge the car up for 30mins and come back to your house to power it away again for another few days!

J.O. Farmer

KCross wrote: »

Thats the theory.
This vehicle-to-home technology would be a bit slicker in that you would simply come home, plug the car in as you normally would to charge the car and if there is a power cut it will automatically (via a bi-directional charge point) start feeding power back to the house. No need to get any inverters or cables out or popping the bonnet etc and it would drive the entire house rather than just a few essential items. Its in the future...

Sounds great but what happens if the power goes and doesn't come back for hours could you end up stranded at home because your house has flattened the cars battery.

KCross

Say my name wrote: »

Seemingly that's it.

If your home is run by renewables and your car is fully charged up and the renewables start to fade. You can use the power from the car's battery.

Thats the theory. That tech is in trial but not commercially available at reasonable cost yet.... It will happen though... when is the unknown.

Its called Vehicle-To-Home and also Vehicle-To-Grid.

Some EV owners, during power cuts, connect 3rd party 12V inverters to the cars 12V battery and use that to power a few critical items. Once you have the car turned on it will keep the 12V battery charged up so you are in effect running "your house" from the cars high-voltage battery which would last for days..... you could do the same with a petrol/diesel car too as long as you have the car running.

This vehicle-to-home technology would be a bit slicker in that you would simply come home, plug the car in as you normally would to charge the car and if there is a power cut it will automatically (via a bi-directional charge point) start feeding power back to the house. No need to get any inverters or cables out or popping the bonnet etc and it would drive the entire house rather than just a few essential items. Its in the future...

Say my name

cute geoge wrote: »

How can you use a car for battery storage ,is it just by leaving it parked up and hooked on to it with cables???

Seemingly that's it.

If your home is run by renewables and your car is fully charged up and the renewables start to fade. You can use the power from the car's battery.

KCross

blue5000 wrote: »

The big problem with dairy farms is the demand peaks-troughs. There is a huge demand at milking, the rest of the day it's like a normal house, unless cooling with an ice bank at night rate. I think wind would be a better option on a dairy farm. There's not too many lads still milking at 10am.

That peak-trough issue is the gotcha for all electricity usage, not just dairy farmers.

Wind doesnt really pay that well and is as likely to be producing nothing at 12pm as Solar so that peak-trough issue will still be there for wind turbines.

Turbines are also significantly more expensive, require alot of ongoing maintenance and they need a suitable site which alot of farms wouldnt have. It isnt just a case of stick it in the middle of a field with nothing around it and it'll be grand.

You can stick 20 Solar panels on a shed roof and forget about it for the next 20 years!

I'm not saying every dairy farmer should spend on Solar PV. I am saying they should consider it. A simple €30 energy monitor on their main supply over the course of one summer and you'll quickly learn how much you are using during the 10-19:00 timeframe and whether it will be worth it or not.

You can dump alot of your excess electricity to hot water. I know that runs on night rate but its still saving you money. The Feed-in-tariff can then also come into play to soak up any excess beyond that but that FiT is a bit of an unknown yet.

The main thing that farmers have going for them is loads of unobstructed roof space and high energy bills. Its worth looking at.

cute geoge

How can you use a car for battery storage ,is it just by leaving it parked up and hooked on to it with cables???
Every year they are becoming more efficent with battery storage so would be reluctant to splash out on renewables just yet ,what you pay dear for this year will be probably reduntant in 3 years time in regard battery storage

Say my name

blue5000 wrote: »

The big problem with dairy farms is the demand peaks-troughs. There is a huge demand at milking, the rest of the day it's like a normal house, unless cooling with an ice bank at night rate. I think wind would be a better option on a dairy farm. There's not too many lads still milking at 10am.

A dairy neighbour with solar and wind generation claims to be running the farm totally on on farm generation.
It would make you think though.
Especially now with electric cars, motorbikes and quads out. People even using cars now for battery storage to run the house.

mahoney_j

blue5000 wrote: »

The big problem with dairy farms is the demand peaks-troughs. There is a huge demand at milking, the rest of the day it's like a normal house, unless cooling with an ice bank at night rate. I think wind would be a better option on a dairy farm. There's not too many lads still milking at 10am.

You’d be surprised …..know a few lads who still milk at 10 or later …..and 7/8 maby 9 in evening ….everyone to there own but jaysus …

blue5000

The big problem with dairy farms is the demand peaks-troughs. There is a huge demand at milking, the rest of the day it's like a normal house, unless cooling with an ice bank at night rate. I think wind would be a better option on a dairy farm. There's not too many lads still milking at 10am.

KCross

Mooooo wrote: »

Anyone using solar pv, any idea what the ROI would be on a dairy farm?

Its a little off-topic but its worth a reply.

Any farmer, particularly dairy, who has some capital to spend now for a long term gain should take a serious look at Solar PV.

Dairy farmers, in particular, because the sun is shining most at the time that dairy farms have the ability to utilise it (self-consumption is critically important for ROI), which is ~10:00-19:00 during the summer months..... what with plate coolers, bulk tanks, milking machine, compressors, hot water, water pumps etc. In addition farmers have loads of wide open roof space with no shading which is quite important to maximise the output. Ideally south facing.

There are several threads in the Renewable forum that you should look at for costs and consider getting some installers out to quote you.
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=117396876

As for your ROI question... thats a very difficult one to answer definitively as it depends on what exactly you go for and what your usage profile is like.
e.g. How many panels, what direction they are facing, how much of the electricity you can use, have you got batteries, have you got 3-phase... lots of variables but the payback should be, for a dairy farmer, somewhere around 5-7yrs. After that its money in the bank and SolarPV has no moving parts or servicing required. It either works or it doesnt. The panels are good for decades (25+ years). The weak link is the inverter which will die eventually (10 year warranty usually) but they are relatively cheap (€hundreds) to replace.

Alot of farms have their electricity supply connected to their house in which case you'd be able to apply for the domestic SolarPV grant
https://www.seai.ie/grants/home-energy-grants/solar-electricity-grant/

Im not sure if you can apply for a grant if the farm supply is separate but you dont need the grant to make it viable and I'm sure you'd be able to claim other tax reliefs since it is a capital expenditure.

Finally, as a headsup, there is a Feed-In-Traiff coming in the next month or so. A FiT is where you get paid for any generation that you dont use. That energy gets sent to the grid and at the moment Eirgrid get to use it for free!

There will be a new microgeneration scheme put in place next month which will allow you to get paid for the unused energy... probably around the night rate value. It requires the installation of a smart meter which might be a double edged sword as the rates so far on smart meters are higher than standard day/night tariffs. If that occurs then you just let it go to the grid for free and do your best to use it all by dumping the excess to heat hot water or any other means possible (timing ice generators etc).

Come on over to the renewable forum for further discussion, there are some farmers over there!

[Deleted User]

Anyone here a customer of Waterpower down in kanturk ?
How do you find them?

http://www.waterpower.ie/

whelan2

mahoney_j wrote: »

Tbh I think the ifa should have nothing to do with this and just represent all farmers ,take on the coops ,meat factories ,lobby govt etc

Wasn't that Pat smith's baby?

orm0nd

mahoney_j wrote: »

Tbh I think the ifa should have nothing to do with this and just represent all farmers ,take on the coops ,meat factories ,lobby govt etc

I have changed broadband/landline/mobile providers a good few times over the years and the most clueless, ignorant & unqualified staff I have ever come across were the crowd at ifa telecom.