Time to give electricity the flick?

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

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#1849367 20-Aug-2017 19:59

Heh Heh, I know what you mean. But earlier on in this thread, there was alot of discussion from people who were thinking of joining Flick or who had just joined. Wanting to know how to get the most out of it. And it was mostly me and a few others giving most of the replies. Some of those people probably ended up here due to googling Flick Electric.

So there will probably be some short term trends. But I don't think they will hold over the entire lifetime of this thread. Then again, it seems that EK is the new favourite power company on GZ. I remember when Powershop was the favourite power company on GZ.

Also Powerswitch used to always say that Flick Electric is the cheapest power company. Then they started saying that Mercury was the cheapest. Now they are saying that Meridian is the cheapest. Which doesn't help in my case, as the Powerswitch site doesn't allow me to pick the correct plan that Im on. Yet it offers lot's of plans that you can't even get in Auckland.

You can also see powershop's changing whims in the switching figures on the Electricity Authority website.

Sam91

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#1850679 22-Aug-2017 21:19

Prices have definitely settled now, as you can see we saved money for the first time in ages. Hopefully this encourages some of you to switch back to Flick.

timmmay

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#1850685 22-Aug-2017 21:43

Is that a new flick visualisation?

Sam91

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#1850708 22-Aug-2017 21:54

timmmay: Is that a new flick visualisation?

Yes, I think they introduced it around the time of the biggest price spike. It's definitely a clever way of retaining customers during price spikes.

Aredwood

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#1850712 22-Aug-2017 21:58

@timmmay Yes. It is on the bottom of the "snapshot" page when you login(desktop), and on the bills tab of the Android app. And it tells you your savings % for that week when you hover over each column.

And yes the savings are definitely back for me as well. I saved 16% on my latest bill. Week of 7/8 - 13/8 My total units used was 197 and average raw wholesale price was 6.78c per unit. Previous bill was -4% savings, so my savings graph jumps from red to a tall green bar in just 1 week.

[edited to add]

My total "losses" due to the bad weeks was $-22.87, which is less than 1 weeks average power usage for me. The worst week was a loss of $9.26 Yet my savings for the latest bill was $7.75. So in only 1 month approx, I would have recouped my losses. And even if next year is also a dry year, I should get another 11 months of savings until then. Still got another $-15.12 to recoup. I had a total of 8 weeks where I had losses + 1 week where savings were only 1%.

andrewNZ

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#1850817 23-Aug-2017 06:59

My total losses across 2 months, according to Flick, were around $78. It's a 5% hit to the overall savings as reported by Flick.

My normal weekly winter bill is around $40, The worst week by far was $68. We didn't do a heck of a lot differently during the spikes.

timmmay

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#1850840 23-Aug-2017 07:28

My losses were zero and I didn't have any stress about spikes ;) EK doesn't do savings in the same way, but in two months I've saved $111 over the main power company in my area, which is around 24%.

I saved a bunch with Flick, but I'm saving with EK as well. Maybe I'll change back, but that'd mostly be because EK customer service around faults leaves a lot to be desired - though they tell me they've fixed some aspects and are working on others like the website.

heapsort

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#1850959 23-Aug-2017 08:38

I switched to Flick in January after years with Powershop, and I'm glad I did despite the dry Winter because I like the Flick pricing model on principle.

There was one particular expensive week (just over $80, saving -58%) but the latest bill is just under $40 and back to positive savings.

andrewNZ

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#1851203 23-Aug-2017 12:32

timmmay:
My losses were zero and I didn't have any stress about spikes ;) EK doesn't do savings in the same way, but in two months I've saved $111 over the main power company in my area, which is around 24%.

I saved a bunch with Flick, but I'm saving with EK as well. Maybe I'll change back, but that'd mostly be because EK customer service around faults leaves a lot to be desired - though they tell me they've fixed some aspects and are working on others like the website.

I'm a bit crook, so forgive me if this comes across wrong.

I appreciate that you're happy with EK, but the constant posts are starting to sound a lot less Flick related, and significantly more EK related.

timmmay

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#1851206 23-Aug-2017 12:36

andrewNZ:
I'm a bit crook, so forgive me if this comes across wrong.

I appreciate that you're happy with EK, but the constant posts are starting to sound a lot less Flick related, and significantly more EK related.

Ok, I'll Flick it back to the original topic :)

Wiggum

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#1851210 23-Aug-2017 12:42

Sam91:

Prices have definitely settled now, as you can see we saved money for the first time in ages. Hopefully this encourages some of you to switch back to Flick.

Yea I jumped to EK. I'm holding off until at least mid Sep to jump back to Flick.

tdgeek

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#1851493 23-Aug-2017 20:20

I dont get this. The posts about the spikes were bigly. Up to $1-20 kWh, often in the high teens. So allow days and days and days at those rates, yet a few here said that the extra costs was minimal. Id have thought it would have been tens o dollars per dat for many days?

Me, the cold times were 40kWh. Says\ its only 25. At peak hours of $1 plus or minus, thats huge. But I'm hearing very very small numbers here

Wiggum

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#1851536 23-Aug-2017 21:32

I guess its because when the figures are really high, most people run around switching everything off, resulting in minimal costs anyway. (Just loads of stress)

The problem for me was that I could not do this. At my worst (mid July) I had 2 days of $40 each in a row, but I was at work.

Aredwood

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#1851546 23-Aug-2017 22:16

@tdgeek I have gas cooking and heating, running on LPG. The LPG costs me 15.8c per Kw/Hr inc GST. So when prices are high, I just use LPG heating instead of electric heating. I also have solar hot water + battery backup for my router, ONT etc. Im also on a peak/offpeak price plan which Flick is the only power company AFAIK in Auckland that offers that plan.

So load shifting and substitution + savings from the peak/offpeak plan. All means that I can get through some quite nasty price spikes without much losses. Im also going to be adding solar PV and adding to my battery storage capacity. Mainly to offset my peak usage, but it will also help in future price spikes. And I will still have power during power cuts.

The people who would have felt the most pain from the price spikes would have been those who have full electric houses. Therefore not much ability to time shift. There definitely have been people who lost alot due to those spikes. (look at the Flick Electric Facebook page) But alot of those people would not have been suited to a spot price power plan anyway.

Interestingly, there is an article in today's NBR (paywalled) where Mercury energy is complaining that electricity hedge contracts 2 years from now are not expensive enough.

tdgeek

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#1851641 24-Aug-2017 07:47

Aredwood:

@tdgeek I have gas cooking and heating, running on LPG. The LPG costs me 15.8c per Kw/Hr inc GST. So when prices are high, I just use LPG heating instead of electric heating. I also have solar hot water + battery backup for my router, ONT etc. Im also on a peak/offpeak price plan which Flick is the only power company AFAIK in Auckland that offers that plan.

So load shifting and substitution + savings from the peak/offpeak plan. All means that I can get through some quite nasty price spikes without much losses. Im also going to be adding solar PV and adding to my battery storage capacity. Mainly to offset my peak usage, but it will also help in future price spikes. And I will still have power during power cuts.

The people who would have felt the most pain from the price spikes would have been those who have full electric houses. Therefore not much ability to time shift. There definitely have been people who lost alot due to those spikes. (look at the Flick Electric Facebook page) But alot of those people would not have been suited to a spot price power plan anyway.

Interestingly, there is an article in today's NBR (paywalled) where Mercury energy is complaining that electricity hedge contracts 2 years from now are not expensive enough.

Thanks, makes sense.

Ive finally sorted out my Solar HW. Top thermostat failed so I had only bottom element use. Thats now turned off. Its a boost system. Also reset the three timers, so I now have one hour boost 7am to 8am, and 9pm to 10pm my EK free hour. Solar picks up the tab during the day to a lower or reasonable degree at the moment

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