Smart Tariff Unit Rates

Anyone with Bord Gais Energy can now 'register their interest":https://www.bordgaisenergy.ie/home/help/microgen

is it mandatory for each utility provider to pay a feed-in tariff once you start exporting to any excess to the grid?

The reality is that even if the electricity provider is good enough to pay a realistic amount for what we supply, it's absolutely necessary to compare the overall tariff with other providers. There is no point in signing up for a tariff with a high FIT if the rate per unit is higher.

Pinergy have offered 13.5c FIT, but their Standard unit rate is €0.3673 inc VAT (rural)

Electric Ireland (for example) have not announced a FIT rate, but their standard unit price is 28.12c inc VAT. So you wouldn't choose Pinergy now unless you actually have SolarPV. Will Electric Ireland's Standard rate stay at 28.12 when their FIT rate is announced? I for one am expecting an email stating they are changing my Tariff to a 'new Solar CEG' tariff, and here are the details (with increased unit cost to compensate).

KCross is right; the regulators just haven't thought this through when they regulated. The idea of a zero minimum tariff opening up good competition only works if the providers play the game, which they won't. All this is likely to be is more profit for them. They will find a way around paying us for our excess if they can, after all, they've had our excess for nothing up to now. I bet they've got their accounts teams working flat out to find ways around paying for our excess!

A better idea would have been a rate set at (for example) 5% below the normal standard unit rate. After all, it will not cost ESB a penny to distribute what we are providing. But why would we expect fairness?

Moral; I suggest you compare your standard rate now with your standard rate when you get your CEG rate!

I hope I am wrong in my pessimism.

Interesting.

So I would be right in saying if after they did this testing for €750 and found your house was all lovely, nothing needed doing etc. you wouldn't get the €750 back?

I must admit that compared to the price of a 12 panel solar PV system 'trade', the final fitted price does appear to be quite steep. Okay, I realise there's scaffolding, 3/4 people to pay and a fair amount of 'office time' in admin work to get the paperwork in a fit state to push over to SEAI to pay out, but it still seems expensive. But then the grant of €2400 seems rather minimal too, considering we are helping our government to meet its EU emissions, I do think they should be digging deeper.

I was thinking of installing air to air heat pumps in to the house once the solar PV has gone in. Not to replace the oil boiler, but rather to supplement it. However, I cannot find out from anywhere if this is allowed. It will cost me €200 to find out, the cost refunded if we go ahead (using one of their approved installers), but I will lose €200 if I get told I have to have the oil boiler decommissioned and removed (its only 3 years old so that's not happening). Again, all these €200s and €750s will all add up, taking a long time to recoup (if ever) if we decide not to, or cannot, have the works done.

All this makes me relate to your hour's thought provocations. Like the CEG tariff part (minimum of zero cents per unit), it seems these 'experts' really can't come up with a good idea if their lives depended on it.

I've taken the full €2400 grant for solar PV (booked to be fitted in 2 weeks time) as that's the only grant I have been able to get from anywhere for this house which was built to first fix in 2008 and that I bought and finished in 2017. You'd think the government would bend over backwards to give people like me grants to help finish all the half-built houses that litter Ireland, or is it just me that thinks this?

Anyway, yes Irish Steve, I totally get what you re saying. And whereas I do get why the SEAI have a list of approved installers, it really is just a licence to print money.