Time to give electricity the flick?

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Time to give electricity the flick?

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Master Geek
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#1822176 13-Jul-2017 22:42

I'm guessing they have someone monitoring these forums and have decided that not accepting Flick customers will look bad now it has been exposed, and so have made a quick change of policy to save reputation.

Would seem like a sensible move as Geekzone posters are a vocal bunch, and they decided they didn't want a wave of bad press on here. Just a guess though....

I'm still riding it out... so far. Saved $580 on previous supplier. I have lost out by being on Flick for the last 3 weeks, and might be a few more weeks of loss yet.... but long term the savings are still very apparent to me, so I don't need to bail.... it will take much worse than this to dent the savings kitty seriously.

Mike

timmmay

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#1822202 14-Jul-2017 06:43

miked:

I'm guessing they have someone monitoring these forums and have decided that not accepting Flick customers will look bad now it has been exposed, and so have made a quick change of policy to save reputation.

Or perhaps their workload from switchers has gone down enough that they have the capacity to absorb more new customers.

tdgeek

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#1822203 14-Jul-2017 06:48

Maybe they see this as an opportunity, short term pain to get more customers, not all will bail in a month.

Wiggum

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#1822204 14-Jul-2017 07:00

timmmay:

miked:

I'm guessing they have someone monitoring these forums and have decided that not accepting Flick customers will look bad now it has been exposed, and so have made a quick change of policy to save reputation.

Or perhaps their workload from switchers has gone down enough that they have the capacity to absorb more new customers.

I think you misunderstood. Everybody could signup, except for flick customers. Even my non flick neighbor could.

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#1822205 14-Jul-2017 07:04

Wiggum:

I think you misunderstood. Everybody could signup, except for flick customers. Even my non flick neighbor could.

I understood. It could be they're losing money and Flick customers tend to use their free hour of power, the volume of people switching from Flick overwhelming them, or a combination of both.

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#1822206 14-Jul-2017 07:14

timmmay:

Wiggum:

I think you misunderstood. Everybody could signup, except for flick customers. Even my non flick neighbor could.

I understood. It could be they're losing money and Flick customers tend to use their free hour of power, the volume of people switching from Flick overwhelming them, or a combination of both.

Agreed, just wish they were honest about it then. Instead the website was giving the error that they can't take any more signups from my area. There must have been some sort of check for flick customers built into their signup code. Anyway, it seems fixed now, and I am able to signup. Just strange it got fixed right after some flick customers posted about it here.

tdgeek

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#1822208 14-Jul-2017 07:29

Wiggum:

timmmay:

Wiggum:

I think you misunderstood. Everybody could signup, except for flick customers. Even my non flick neighbor could.

I understood. It could be they're losing money and Flick customers tend to use their free hour of power, the volume of people switching from Flick overwhelming them, or a combination of both.

Agreed, just wish they were honest about it then. Instead the website was giving the error that they can't take any more signups from my area. There must have been some sort of check for flick customers built into their signup code. Anyway, it seems fixed now, and I am able to signup. Just strange it got fixed right after some flick customers posted about it here.

I doubt it was due to here. I'd say that they didn't want to be bothered with a number of loss making customers from Flick that will bail in a week or more. But if there are a lot, they may feel we will keep some of these as some/many Flick customers may in fact be scared of exposure to spot prices, and may seek an almost as cheap alternative, set and forget. Flick may be cheaper, but perhaps over a year, the winter blows away much of the savings, and it needs to be managed a lot in winter.

I applaud Flick and EK, but they both may need a short term contract to maintain some subscriber stability. OTOH no contract is a feature, but OTOH it encourages switch, rinse and repeat.

pogo

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#1822325 14-Jul-2017 10:52

At what point is someone going to "do" something to help with the high spot prices?

Surely a spot price of 20x (!) the normal price sustained over long periods is sure to raise some eyebrows. How bad does it need to get before any contigencies are put in place? What constituents an "emergency" situation? Lake levels only?

Right now I'd imagine that every entity on a fixed rate has no incentive whatsoever to conserve energy, which exacerbates the problem for those on spot.

Thoughts?

easycloud

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#1822329 14-Jul-2017 10:57

pogo: At what point is someone going to "do" something to help with the high spot prices?

Surely a spot price of 20x (!) the normal price sustained over long periods is sure to raise some eyebrows. How bad does it need to get before any contigencies are put in place? What constituents an "emergency" situation? Lake levels only?

Right now I'd imagine that every entity on a fixed rate has no incentive whatsoever to conserve energy, which exacerbates the problem for those on spot.

Thoughts?

I just came back from the doctor's office and noticed every waiting room had 3 incandescent bulbs burning away with no one in them. I had exactly the same thought, 3 consecutive days of extremely high spot prices meanwhile there is a lot of waste that's going unnoticed.

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b0untypure1

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#1822330 14-Jul-2017 10:57

Wiggum:

$1.20 a unit now and still climbing.

I always knew there would be spikes, but I never expected this. This price looks like its going to continue to climb well into the night. In my history with Flick, this is really the worst.

Yeah I never 'flicked' over because they can basically charge whatever they want and you have no choice but to pay. I'm happy with PowerShop as we just buy the same deal every month and never need extra. Flick could also undercharge and make a loss to gain customers. Then once they hit 100 or 200k customers, increase their margin to 20% and reap the rewards.

dantheperson

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#1822333 14-Jul-2017 11:00

pogo: At what point is someone going to "do" something to help with the high spot prices?

Surely a spot price of 20x (!) the normal price sustained over long periods is sure to raise some eyebrows. How bad does it need to get before any contigencies are put in place? What constituents an "emergency" situation? Lake levels only?

There's still quite a way to go from an emergency. South Island lakes are low, spot prices are high which is doing it's job encouraging thermal coal and gas plants to run at 100% for 24x7 to conserve hydro. But north island storage is high, and we only have to go a month or so until we get into the spring rains.

Here's the official diagram, shows there plenty of storage before we hit the redzone

some relevant pages

https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/security-supply/daily-security-supply-updates

https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/security-supply/hydro-risk-curves

timmmay

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#1822340 14-Jul-2017 11:07

pogo: At what point is someone going to "do" something to help with the high spot prices?

Surely a spot price of 20x (!) the normal price sustained over long periods is sure to raise some eyebrows. How bad does it need to get before any contigencies are put in place? What constituents an "emergency" situation? Lake levels only?

Right now I'd imagine that every entity on a fixed rate has no incentive whatsoever to conserve energy, which exacerbates the problem for those on spot.

Thoughts?

Nothing, I would imagine. It's a rare seasonal event. All you can do is add more water storage or run the other generation types.

b0untypure1:

Yeah I never 'flicked' over because they can basically charge whatever they want and you have no choice but to pay. I'm happy with PowerShop as we just buy the same deal every month and never need extra. Flick could also undercharge and make a loss to gain customers. Then once they hit 100 or 200k customers, increase their margin to 20% and reap the rewards.

Flicks fee to provide service is relatively small. They couldn't subsidise the actual power pricing, that tends to be 10c/kwh in summer, their fee is around 1-3c from memory?

pogo

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#1822341 14-Jul-2017 11:08

dantheperson:
pogo: At what point is someone going to "do" something to help with the high spot prices?

Surely a spot price of 20x (!) the normal price sustained over long periods is sure to raise some eyebrows. How bad does it need to get before any contigencies are put in place? What constituents an "emergency" situation? Lake levels only?

There's still quite a way to go from an emergency. South Island lakes are low, spot prices are high which is doing it's job encouraging thermal oil and gas plants to run at 100% for 24x7 to conserve hydro. But north island storage is high, and we only have to go a month or so until we get into the spring rains.

Here's the official diagram, shows there plenty of storage before we hit the redzone

some relevant pages

https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/security-supply/daily-security-supply-updates

https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/security-supply/hydro-risk-curves

What disturbs me is how bad the spot price is when we're only in the 'watch' zone. Is there historical spot price data for previous emergency or alert situations? How do we compare now?

tdgeek

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#1822353 14-Jul-2017 11:14

pogo: At what point is someone going to "do" something to help with the high spot prices?

Surely a spot price of 20x (!) the normal price sustained over long periods is sure to raise some eyebrows. How bad does it need to get before any contigencies are put in place? What constituents an "emergency" situation? Lake levels only?

Right now I'd imagine that every entity on a fixed rate has no incentive whatsoever to conserve energy, which exacerbates the problem for those on spot.

Thoughts?

What do you suggest?

Every provider is paying spot prices, except Flick. Unless you put every consumer on spot prices, nothing will change. Consumers aren't abusing power usage as that affects their bill, and where winter hurts providers paying spot but billing fixed rate, the opposite happens when spot is very low. Its swings and roundabouts for providers, and the vast number of consumers are not affected. Winter is winter.It also needs to be treated by spot paying consumers on Flick to be swings and roundabouts.

timmmay

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#1822355 14-Jul-2017 11:17

tdgeek:

Every provider is paying spot prices, except Flick. Unless you put every consumer on spot prices, nothing will change. Consumers aren't abusing power usage as that affects their bill, and where winter hurts providers paying spot but billing fixed rate, the opposite happens when spot is very low. Its swings and roundabouts for providers, and the vast number of consumers are not affected. Winter is winter.It also needs to be treated by spot paying consumers on Flick to be swings and roundabouts.

Are you sure about that? I assume that the larger companies may have agreements to buy at some specific price, and some own their own generation.

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