Neon Reef - any views?

[Deleted User]

Meanwhile, the larger, seemingly fireproof, suppliers continue to behave like the cartel that they undoubtedly are, and kill the competition. Serves us right for selling off the family/national silver, and becoming prey to geopolitics and international leverage. 

The whole thing is based on a fallacy, anyway. Most of these companies are not actual suppliers or generators, but glorified accounts and billing centres. 

wittynamegoeshere

I read yesterday that Ofgem are getting ready to run failed energy companies themselves if they reach the point where they can't get another supplier to take over.

Hopefully this means they won't be bailing out the cartel and will be the start of transferring everything over to the government.  Perhaps then we can all do useful things with our lives instead during the time that we currently spend mucking about with all this pointless nonsense.

QrizB

Deleted_User said:

The whole thing is based on a fallacy, anyway. Most of these companies are not actual suppliers or generators, but glorified accounts and billing centres. 

If you're talking about the Big Six, you're mistaken. Here's a table from EDF's website looking at zero-carbon energy (which favours EDF's nuclear business):

Several of thoss companies also operate fossil fuel power plants.

MWT

wittynamegoeshere said:

Hopefully this means they won't be bailing out the cartel and will be the start of transferring everything over to the government. 

Nationalized energy supply would just kill any innovation dead and it is hard to imagine any serious success at dealing with the climate objectives without some innovation...

wittynamegoeshere

I wonder whether these companies have any kind of segregation?

If one of the big six suppliers went bust then would their power stations stop working, or could their retail division close without it affecting the generation side of the business?

I suspect that they're all one giant ball of a company, in the hope that they've made themselves too big to fail.  This way they can demand that the government bails them out or the lights go out.  I just hope the government stands up to them if this does happen.  Does anyone know whether they or their directors contribute to the Tory party?!

Telegraph_Sam

The post that followed this from neilsedaka appears to have been blocked, or there is a system failure

Farway

Deleted_User said:

We could have much greater scrutiny that the finances of energy suppliers are robust before letting them enter the market. Which would tend eliminate some of the very low tariffs, and give us competition between fewer, more similar, suppliers. But if you go that far, why stop there? The "choice" left is not worth keeping, so nationalize the whole thing, which would reduce costs very significantly, because

(a) it eliminates all the costs of separate businesses, marketing, switching, comparison sites, etc.; and

(b) a nationalized company would have a lower cost of capital than even the biggest energy companies.

In theory, but nationalised industries, think NHS or Local Council or BBC [ I know not nationalised but all living off the taxpayer] soon see their function to serve the employees and not the customer by creating lots of non jobs,which you can see in the Gruaniad sits vac pages, plus profligate spending

CRISPIANNE3

All seems to be proceeding well. Meter reading requested today and email advising dd will be taken on the 11 October.  I have read good and bad reviews but so far all is looking good.  However time will tell!

Hermann

What is actually needed is for the UK to have more secure & resilient generation in the first place, with better storage facilities.
Generation that is decoupled from the global wholesale markets.
That would provide a stable wholesale price that doesn't suffer from these fluctuations, fluctuations which both encourage speculation on a falling price & bankruptcy on a rising price.
Anything else is just sticking plasters on the real issues 
And sticking plasters fall off eventually.

jrio

Has anyone had success in re-joining Neon Reef and expediting the process?  Their website is set up to only accommodate new customer applications - there is no option to re-activate one's account - and the only contact option is email, with a reply time of up to 5 days, which I imagine may be longer at this time.