MSE News: Is it worth paying a monthly membership to get cheap energy?

lstar337

jamesd wrote: »

But others will want the energy actually supplied to them to be renewable.

Which is impossible with our current setup.

We are all supplied by a bucket of water (the grid), some companies are filling it with Evian (renewable energy) and some with swamp water (fossil fuels). What comes out your tap (electricity meter) will always be a mixture of both (green and brown energy).

By choosing a renewable supplier, all you can be sure of is that the wholesale portion of you energy bill is funding only renewable energy generation.

NineDeuce

lstar337 wrote: »

Which is impossible with our current setup.

We are all supplied by a bucket of water (the grid), some companies are filling it with Evian (renewable energy) and some with swamp water (fossil fuels). What comes out your tap (electricity meter) will always be a mixture of both (green and brown energy).

By choosing a renewable supplier, all you can be sure of is that the wholesale portion of you energy bill is funding only renewable energy generation.

But this is nitpicking and I think that what you say would be fairly apparent to anybody, especially they dont have a large solar farm next to them.

Griffey

My current supplier Co-op Energy charge me £117 a month for gas and electricity, their new deal starting 1st March is £135 a month so I shopped around and decided to go with Outfox the Market who quoted me £61 plus the monthly subscription so even if they charge me the highest rate I am still £60 better off a month. Only time will tell if I made the right choice or not.

lstar337

NineDeuce wrote: »

But this is nitpicking and I think that what you say would be fairly apparent to anybody, especially they dont have a large solar farm next to them.

I used to think that too, but some people really don't get it.

ChaunceyGardiner

Griffey wrote: »

Only time will tell if I made the right choice or not.

Why can’t you tell right now? Presumably you have a good idea of your annual consumption.

jamesd

lstar337 wrote: »

Which is impossible with our current setup.

It's easy with our current setup if you want to make that choice and I gave two examples in my initial post: "district heating systems or rooftop solar". Hydro If a stream is on the property), hydrothermal, ground or air source heat pumps are some others where you can pay for and really be supplied with renewable heat or power.

What isn't possible is doing it through the national gas or electricity grids. Using those you can only change the overall shared mixture. But there's at least one supplier using the grid which has claimed to actually deliver renewable power to their customers, not just feed some in while delivering to the customer the same mixture as others in the street.

Both actual delivery and feeding some into the grid can be desired, what I'm asking is for MSE to be clear about what customers are really buying.