Switching electric/gas providers (see first post for links)

contract finished with BGE, the offer is gone from the my account section but in their plans i can still sign up with existing customer discount. it's the same as the offer, 24%, differs on some smart plans. was checking it regularly there & upped them like last year.

thinking on going energia for the time being, just over 23c unit & 236sc. closest to what we were on with bge.

We're low users so cashback would be cheapest but if you move early they'll take it back & then maybe some smart plan but would you be bothered micromanaging your usage for about a euro a week, stuck on smart then too.

I thought all smart plans would be divided into Day/Evening/Night (or similar). Yet one of the smart EI plans is the same electric rate?

I'm probably being thick here

Yes, definitely.

If you are charging two EVs and can survive charging them between the EV charging times (02:00-04:00, 02:00-05:00 or 02:00-06:00 depending on the supplier) the cost can be as low at €0.05c per kW.

However, I have thermal solar which heats the water for about 9 months of the year and use gas to heat the house.

On smart meter rates there is generally a peak time hit between 17:00 - 19:00 when the costs per kW are (much) higher but that can be managed.

Overall, for me with two EVs, I can charge each to 100% for about €5.00.

Don't forget Day/Peak/Night and EV, there can be great savings using the EV 3-4 hour super cheap window, heating water, charging phones laptops tablets etc. I have a trailing socket on a timed plug with everything plugged into it.

No you aren't, the 24hr ones are smart plans in that you can use an app or go online to track your usage, you can see on a day by day basis how much your bill is going to be.

i was comparing the renewal offer that i got 15% discount with available new customer offer.

i have the free saturday plan with 25% discount. for new customers the same plan has only 15% discount.

same as the one i was offered. so nothing much different between renewal vs new.

i uploaded my hdf on energypal and BGE was 3rd cheapest and was only 8euros expensive than the cheapest SSE.

so looks like there is nothing much available for me.

I’m hoping someone might have some advice on this:

it’s my first time using the energy pal website, but my export from ESB only has details from February.

Has anyone exported their data lately and worked out how to export the full year?

I’ve solar panels so my winter usage is higher than my summer.

Secondly does anyone know how often the plans on the energy pal website are updated, its showing an incorrect cash bonus for SSE.

It should be €1330 we only got €450 in handouts this year, 3x150, bears no relevance to me anyway as my usage is more than double the so called national average of 4200 units.

Averages can be a relavant indicator when done for a homogenous group, but the average electric consumption is a meaningless metric alright.

We're calculating an average with households that have dual fuel so electricity is just a part of energy bills, others are electric only (particularly heating and hot water), some even use electricity as fuel for travel with 1 or 2 EVs, others rely primarily on solar panels for electricity, not to mention the obvious that a household can be 1 or 6+ people.

I never understood what household could find relevant to compare their bill to the average or median, we don't even know what that median household looks like, statistically, in terms of these different parameters.

It's not even useful as a number that would tell us something (as a country, not for individual households) through its evolution over time, since the reality we're measuring changes quite significantly, with strong deployments of solar panels and EVs.

Just because you can calculate an average/median, doesn't mean you should.

I'm looking at switching to SSE but during the online sign up process, I dont see an option to specify the date for the switch to take effect. My current contract with Bord Gais doesnt expire for a few weeks.. Whats the best way to proceed?

Sorry lads, very long thread and difficult to search.

Renewing gas today, bonkers says that SSE has the lowest gas rate at 8.24c / kWh

Is there anything better out there that I might have missed?

Switched to SSE, seems best rate in the market for gas only. 8.24c / kWh incl. VAT for variable rate and 8.28c / kWh fixed rate. Switched to the latter, seems a very small premium for a fixed rate

The sad thing is that gas is so cheap and the opportunity cost of electricity (FIT) is so high, that it makes zero financial sense to me to switch from a gas boiler to a heat pump, even if the install would be done entirely free of charge. So looks like I will be stuck with gas for years to come 😔

Thanks man. Sometimes there are the community deals, but it seems not at the moment! I switched to SSE. A pretty decent deal for a fixed gas rate for the year at 8.28c / kWh incl VAT

Just be careful that if you cancel a switch you revert to your old supplier and cannot initiate a new switch for another 30 days.