Solar energy - Feed-in Tariff payment delays - your experiences?

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Morning zeupater.

Understand where you're coming from on this. I'll feed your comments back to those who make our pricing decisions. Can't promise changes but it's good to have as many consumer opinions on board as possible.

Malc

zeupater

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc wrote: »

Morning zeupater.

Understand where you're coming from on this. I'll feed your comments back to those who make our pricing decisions. Can't promise changes but it's good to have as many consumer opinions on board as possible.

Malc

Hi Malc

Thanks, I'm sure that if you need more ammunition regarding consumer opinions we'd be able to get a pretty large thread or even a well populated poll to provide the pricing decision makers with a bit of a headache - that, of course, is if they would be both willing to 'listen-to' and take 'notice-of' what the consumer actually thinks .....

Z

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

I'm sure there'll be plenty of contributors zeupater. I've already fed quite a bit of stuff back from the Energy Forum as well as this one. Notice is taken although actions may not follow immediately. It's good, though, to register consumer concerns.

Thanks zeupater.

Malc

pinnks

I am with Z on this. And another irritation is regional pricing differences. My kids live between 100 and 200 miles from us and pay the same supplier different rates for electricity and gas. How can that be justified?

And all major suppliers offer discounts for the same things as Z says and charge daily charges, so why not just give that pence per unit cost?

Trouble is, they are all scared to lead the way as thy fear they will look uncompetitive, so I doubt anything will happen until and unless Ofgem drives the pace!

Martyn1981

An all in price is something I'm very passionate about. It would have no effect on an average bill, but make a small reduction to low users and a small increase to higher users.

But more importantly, it makes things simpler, and improves the savings from energy awareness, energy efficiency spending and self generation.

Whilst some may say that we should all pay the same for access to the grid, I personally believe it should be based on your use of the grid.

Mart.

michaels

On the other hand when you look at what proportion of the average bill is actually for the energy supplied then perhaps 'fairness' would move the other way - standing charge of 40% of average total bill. Quoting these fixed costs as a daily rate does seem bizarre though..... (where bizarre = deliberately quoting a small number to make comparison harder)

zeupater

michaels wrote: »

On the other hand when you look at what proportion of the average bill is actually for the energy supplied then perhaps 'fairness' would move the other way - standing charge of 40% of average total bill. Quoting these fixed costs as a daily rate does seem bizarre though..... (where bizarre = deliberately quoting a small number to make comparison harder)

Hi

Deliberate complexity .... :think: ..... makes you wonder how that possibly made it past the 'bright sparks' at Ofgem when they were supposedly 'simplifying' the tariff structures.

In essence, simplicity is best related to basic market trading ..."roll-up, roll-up 15p a lb for electricity & 3p a dozen for gas" ... as long as everyone has to utilise the same unit-of-measure we have a level, simple and transparent tariff system where anyone advertising electricity at 13p will clean-up whereas those charging 17p will see their market share dwindle ... it's not rocket-science, it's basic competition which most of us understood as kids in sweet-shops.

Note for legoman62 ... as the instigator of this interesting sub-discussion, do you want to open up a separate thread so that we don't completely hijack this one ?

HTH
Z

silverwhistle

Martyn1981 wrote: »

But more importantly, it makes things simpler, and improves the savings from energy awareness, energy efficiency spending and self generation.

Whilst some may say that we should all pay the same for access to the grid, I personally believe it should be based on your use of the grid.

I'm of the same opinion, although (full disclosure) I'm a very low user on a free SC tariff, hence with a high unit rate and a very strong link to energy efficiency measures.

There is obviously a cost to reinforcing the grid to meet the demands of heavy users, and I'm definitely not one of those. Where I used to live in Italy there was a nominal 3kw peak load for normal supplies and 6kw if you paid extra. The smart meters would trip your supply, you'd switch something off and reconnect. It only happened twice in 7 years, so being aware helps, and if not you soon learn..

Given that some of the issues in future will be peak demand, what plans does the ESI have for this, and will smart meters be able to undertake this smoothing and limiting role?

We already see such things in large users who pay a maximum demand charge as well as unit rates. For them it's worth installing power factor correction, switching on machinery and even lighting in sequence to avoid maximum demand peaks.

Until now there has been a push to sell more units but I think the companies are going to have to do more to adapt to flat or reducing demand. How they reconcile that with prices and investment is another matter. Perhaps a separate thread would be a good idea!

IrishWasherWoman

Good news story - the saga of SSE's FIT Bureau delay of over 1+1/4 yrs to pay out is finally over!
We finally received the cheque in full payment and were able to bank it on Tuesday this week. They've also offered a token amount in compensation, which we've accepted, as it does exceed any lost interest had the money been banked at the right time.
I would definitely encourage a strongly worded complaint to the head honcho, accompanied by mention of the ombudsman, to really get things moving. If only we'd got tougher sooner.
Thanks for reading, good luck to all others needing to move things along.

michaels

First-utility money received today as promised. Make of that what you will.