Smart Tariff Unit Rates

Nice savings so far.

You charged batteries are used up by 8am? You can't tinker with the discharge time?

No the batteries are not used by 8am, since I was charging them between 2-5am they were used for night rate 5-8am and I was not sure if that is the best use for them because night is cheaper compared to day rate. But inverter does not allow to stop discharging between 5-8am. Anyway this has been no addressed with automation. Will see if there's any benefit in that.

I do have 3x3.5kWh pylons but I am not fully charging them overnight. I've got now 20kWh DIY pack balancing and will be hooking it soon and getting rid of pylons. It is still monitoring/learning phase for me on what is the best charge/discharge strategy. Once I get more data probably will add some machine learning and let it decide/automate on charging. I was not expecting that I will use 50% of EV rate so I am happy with that but still there is room for improvement :)

You can select a standard or smart plan

Email him. It's the sort of thing he highlights

I have a similar setup - i cant stop the Solis charging without immesiately consuming battery after charging stops.

Would another option be to set two different nighttime charging rates tho? up the Amps during the EV rate... and mostly fill the battery - and then really drop the amps at 5am on a different charging period until 8am.

That should give you the benefit of the lower prixe, and save the battery to be used at day rate times after 8am...

Send me PM so I have you on record. I probably will start getting rid of them soon.

Those prices are shocking.

Could you get a day /night meter?There's much better value out there.

If you think that's bad try the rural standing charge for that plan. It has now gone up for me to 509 euros!! Absolute robbery!

I think the issue is more that "standing charges" are what's being increased. Sure, with the simple economics of supply and demand, if Ukraine and/or other places are creating a supply issue, then of course the price will go up. And while I personally dislike that, that's the reality that we have to live with that if we use more, then the suppliers will have to buy more raw materials to create the leccie.

What I don't get though is why Standing charges are increasing. That doesn't make any sense to me.

I had a thought today that maybe the trend will go the way phone companies went. Rather than charge for consumed units a flat rate for broadband is now the standard... as green energy comes online just raise the standing charges and it doesn't matter if people go green or not. Let the energy companies build the arrays and wind farms. Depressing

Yup. I've been saying the exact same thing regarding the excessive quotes that come in from some companies and people are saying we should email Eamonn Ryan, talk to Joe Duffy etc. It's a bit of gouging going in, but the companies are perfectly entitled to quote what they see fit. If they get buyers for it, more power to them.

Same here with the increase in standing charges - although philosophical questions aside about communism/capitalism, while they might be entiteld to do so, it's a bit underhand to increase 20+% on the standing charge I think. Are prices increasing across the board? Yes. But have they increased 20% recently? Dunno....I'd doubt it.

It is what it is though. BorgGais have obviously "run the numbers" and they feel that whatever customers they lose due to the increase in Standing charge will be offset by the gains that they get from increased standing charge revenue. Believe me, they've run the numbers. They know the expected percentages.

You sound like Gordon Geko. "Greed is good" LOL!

Jokes aside, it's a fair point you make garo, and different people will have different thoughts I guess. I'm certainly not a "people-before-profit" person (I don't have issue with that thinking, just not my bag) and indeed if anything like the solar panel installers, I think they are perfectly allowed to charge as they see fit. If people move elsewhere to another provider the market will force them to lower.

Where I see it as a bit underhand is that, due to the Ukrainian crisis gas prices, and by extension leccie prices are going through the roof. People are already suffering a bit to manage the increased leccie prices, petrol prices. To then have a company "pile on", while they might be "entitled" to do it.....dunno, it just seems wrong. Unit rates i get as they don't control them, but standing charges?

Disclaimer: I'm not with BordGas. Don't want to move to BordGas, so their standing charges doesn't effect me in the slightest.

Last thing we want is the government involved garo. If you think that's what I'm proposing, you've picked me up wrong there. They've done such an excellent job on the FIT haven't they?

No, my gripe is more around the timing. If it's simply a question of maximizing profit, why not increase standing charges 20% last summer? It seems like it's "opportunistic" using the current climate. That's all. I actually 100% agree with you and I've said a few times that they are perfectly entitled, like the solar installers, to charge as they see fit.... even if the timing is terrible. I absolutely don't see it "wrong" in any way.

If people pay outrageous sums to them..... more power to them. They've got a product/service, they advertise how much they want to charge for it. If people take them up on that offer, kudos to them. If people realize that there are alternatives, then they will migrate en masse <elsewhere> and that will in effect hopefully force them to change their pricing .... or have no customers. That's the market forces at work.

The problem I fear though is that energy like petrol is somewhat "inelastic". Sure we can turn down the thermostats, and not drive to the shop for a pint of milk, but people need some amount of energy to live. So while you and I agree on the functional side of the market, there is an ethical aspect there that I think companies should acknowledge. Someone selling respirators at 10x the normal price start of the pandemic, same story. Entitled to do it, but ethically? Least that would be my take.....

Yeah, it's two separate arguments.

The competitive energy market, operating in a time where we are apparently being encouraged/carbon taxed to use less, will only survive if the consumer is forced to pay more for the less energy they use.

There is no upside potential for the energy consumer since the market was privatised. We will only be offered token choices to mitigate against price rises, not to achieve lower costs.

All good points Garo. All of them and I can't counter any of them other than to say that I believe it's possible to be capitalistic, try to maximize profits and still have some nod towards being ethical. I don't see capitalism being an exclusion to ethics and hope that companies would try (somewhat) to not screw people over. You can still make a tidy profit being ethical.

History is littered with examples as you've shown over many years, but things are improving. Such as not buying cobalt from the congo, or runners made from 12 year old Vietnamese children. Coffee beans from disadvantaged workers. etc There is hope for us yet :-)

Dracula - have you seen this?

Energy Observer Solutions (energy-observer.media)

I know what you are saying - but they are awfully tempting. I currently have -500 in my account - and first bill with PV is 38 euro. Gonna take a while before im not using their own cash to pay the electric bill :P

200 from the guv'ment and 300 from switching to EI.

TBH @paulbok I dont really care what the rate on any tariff is - my strategy is to reduce my usage to very little grid. I use almost zero day rate already so its just a few KW at night anyways. That 300 + 200 cash is gonna do me fine for a while.

I realize if you DONT have PV then yeah - maybe u need to look at the details a little more closely.