Only 4% of houses with smart meters are on smart plans

Aoife Mac Evilly from CRU believes people are making savings using the smart plans. She must have been told that by Eamon .

D/N Meters are currently worth their weight in gold!

Mine was done by KN Circet. The electrician was from Clontarf.

ESB Networks are going to provide an online Portal and app so anyone with a smart meter regardless off tariff (not smart and smart tariffs) can see your data.

Of course they should have had this from day 1 but this is Ireland after all and not sure when this will go live.

Surely it is better to export and get paid half of the rate when losing the other half to income tax after the exemption.

For example pinergy paying 21c to me but even if I was in higher tax bracket and losing 50% to tax I would still be making 10.5c on every exported unit which is a lot more than what any of us expected the full fit to be.

Obviously would prefer it all tax exempt but cutting off nose to spite face by capping export to avoid losing some of fit to tax seems a bad idea

But if using the power direct all the time you wouldn't have to worry about setting export limit up then?

But by having export limit set and not using it at certain times in day you would be throttling your panels back to just the export limit and the extra they could produce and earn would simply not happen as wouldn't be produced in first place

We moved to Nightboost Electric IRL. It has definitely reduced bills, but you must time appliances for the 2-4 slot. We time dishwasher, washing machine, immersion & hybrid car to charge at that time.

I know that.

The poster was asking how can the meter tell what’s in and I explained how.

Yes and you should absolutely.

My (non smart) rate is 28c day 7c night. I will eat my hat if you can find a smart meter tariff within 10% of that.(Especially given that as I have solar, 90+% of my paid usage is night rate)

Unless there's an API so data can feed into Home Assistant etc, it still won't be good enough.

I'd not be in favour of running appliances while people sleep, in case of fire or water leak etc.

We tried setting timers on stuff before but it's a pain in the ass, if there is a power outage you would need to be resetting them etc.

As well as this you have water all the time whether you need it or not so that costs money unless you go around turning it off etc.

So if you are going away for a weekend you'd need to be turning off the immersion but then the day you get back there is no hot water.

Yeah, I use delayed start on dish washer and washing machine, to bring on a best time for PV, and it works well. But I am running appliances when not there, which isn't the best idea.

That's far from being a universal truth. 5-7 is the point of peak demand but that doesn't always (frequently doesn't) correlate with it being the dirtiest time on the grid.

You would be surprised how many people are on standard rates. There is an article on bonkers.ie stating that 39% of electricity consumers & 40% of gas consumers have never switched supplier.

There is also an element of grid management that comes into play too.

Real time pricing is technically possible and has been implemented in some parts of the US but in times of stress can result in astronomical bills. Politically it wouldn't be possible here - maybe real time capped I'd say is as far as we could go.

Those numbers are actually shocking! Likewise though for these people they would be on the standard smart meter rate, not the discounted one

"There is an article on bonkers.ie stating that 39% of electricity consumers & 40% of gas consumers have never switched supplier."

.. and that is exactly why we have inept regulation.. we reap what we sow. sad fact.

To be fair though jk, that's not the regulators' fault. Is it?

Lots of people out there who don't switch. I'd be more clued in than most, and I didn't change myself for 7-8 years until recently. I'm 100% sure during that time (I was with SSE) that there were a number of deals going where I could have saved a few quid, but I didn't out of laziness. Partly because it never seems worth the hassle. The last time I switched (2013?) there was a balls up with the move and it put me off moving as it was a pain to convince them I'd paid and they were saying I never closed the account. Swore I wouldn't switch again as a result as it wasn't worth my time.

That's largely because the idea that you benefit by switching suppliers is BONKERS itself. It's the complete opposite of logic, that you should instead look after your loyal customers. There's a case for banning it for existing customers and obliging loyalty discounts instead

Yeah, there are justified age and education barriers for some. My folks do change gas and leechie every year now. And set reminders on when it expires. But at the start my Mam wanted to know who was providing the power when they moved, as in what company. Were worried they would lose power or get messed around. Took a while of explaining for her to get the energy providers are just a broker really. For some of a certain age it's not like the days of ESB being everything. Or Telecom Eireann....

Plus you have certain discounts for pensioners. My folks lost that when moved home phone provider years ago and didn't spot it for a while. So that could slow them moving too.

My elderly neighbour asked me to dial in his meter reading (which I was glad to do) as he couldn't use the automated phone service (had no speaker on his house phone so couldn't see what he typed and hear at same time). He didn't have any computer or smart phone.

But if people can help those neighbours / family, (as in give them time to find the better deal), they would save a lot.

Ah yeah, I'm aware it's not the providers fault regarding the meter reading. His meter is inside the house, so needs access to read, and he's never been home when reader called. Then never submitted a reading as he can't read it himself, and isn't very tech capable. But doesn't someone else doing it for him.

But he's stayed with Electric Ireland for years, and hasn't been getting discount off his bill at all. People in these companies should be helping older people navigate the best deal with them.

Similar with Vodafone, where they would give him a new handset, a month before his bill renewed, and tie him into a new two year contract. They'd put him on a really expensive contract, and the last time they didn't provide him with the iphone they were supposed to. Had to bring them to the small claims court to have it dealt with, when they refused to supply the phone he was paying for. They didn't even engage with the court.