Electricity plan shopping

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#3015234 30-Dec-2022 09:43

timmmay:

Yeah, I got the sign up credit. Our power bill ranges from about $200 in summer to about $450 in winter, but we keep the house about 24 degrees. Moving to Mercury without an hour of power I'll need to do less pre-heating, plus I installed a new heat pump in my office, so I expect the bill could go down more than expected.

Nice

Our bills are $100 Summer and $250 Winter. Two heat pumps, gas hob, and solar HW. Im home alone till April so last bill was $72, the next one will be $65 lol. So no rush to change but I will evaluate Summer, Winter and mid season bills soon. Be nice to not be tied to the 10pm free hour

eonsim

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#3015259 30-Dec-2022 11:32

larknz:
You can't blame the gentailers for under investment in the grid. Operation of the grid is the sole responsibility of Transpower who are an SOE wholly owned by the government. However I believe that generation should be separated from retailing to improve transparency in the retail market.

To a certain degree I'd say you can, if the Gentailers are not building new generation and are making special deals with the aluminum smelter to insure there is no spare electricity to transport north, then what is Transpower supposed to do? Do you want them charging us money to build transmission new grid connections to areas that the Gentailers may in the future build a power plant? There is in the order of 2GW of consented power plants (mostly wind) that have been approved in some cases for over a decade (some have even had there consents expire) with out being built. Hard to build a grid if companies say they'll be building a powerplant at a specific location and then never do...

larknz

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#3015261 30-Dec-2022 11:42

The most important thing is to separate generation from retailing.

MaxineN

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#3024901 20-Jan-2023 16:57

MaxineN:

https://www.mercury.co.nz/terms-conditions/residential/$250-bonus-credit-2yr

$150 exit still, although with Octopus I'm not bound by anything so I could switch.

Same $150 exit applies on 1 year too.

So I just looked at this months bill and if I was with Mercury I could saved a whopping $45.

Yeah I'm switching.

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itxtme

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#3034077 9-Feb-2023 15:48

Just a word of warning for anyone coming off of contract with Mercury. I just came off, they changed me to a Low User plan (we are all electric, and use a lot so how they thought this was a good idea I have no idea!). No comms, about contract ending, no comms about changing rates, all in breach of their own terms of service that state if charges change by more than 5% they will communicate with 30 days pre-notice. It equated to a bill of around $79 more than it should be.

I got it sorted in that they will change the charges since off plan to their open standard user rate, still waiting for the credit note - so we will see if they do fix it. Pretty poor form from them. Also its impossible to see plans from them if you are already connected. Even speaking to the person on Chat (not the bot), he said you can see them on the site, but if you are already signed up there is no way to do it.

michaelmurfy

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#3034085 9-Feb-2023 15:59

@itxtme This is the problem with most power providers. They do things like this hoping the end user doesn't notice and boom, free money.

I do really like Octopus. I don't have to gamify my power use apart from charge the car overnight to save money. Plus they show their prices by default with GST.

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timmmay

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#3034096 9-Feb-2023 16:14

michaelmurfy:

@itxtme This is the problem with most power providers. They do things like this hoping the end user doesn't notice and boom, free money.

I do really like Octopus. I don't have to gamify my power use apart from charge the car overnight to save money. Plus they show their prices by default with GST.

The three tiered power pricing at different times of the day is a type of gamification. I moved to Mercury and it's SO MUCH BETTER not having to think about when you're using power. My wife didn't like the time based pricing at all.

itxtme

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#3034097 9-Feb-2023 16:18

michaelmurfy:

@itxtme This is the problem with most power providers. They do things like this hoping the end user doesn't notice and boom, free money.

I do really like Octopus. I don't have to gamify my power use apart from charge the car overnight to save money. Plus they show their prices by default with GST.

Yeah agreed, even when they were reading the price options over the phone I had to do the GST equation and compare. TBH if I had an easier way to graph my usage, then Octopus could possibly be good for us too, I just am unsure how much of ours is in peak time working from home, so a $0.24 (peak) vs $0.18kwh (anytime) is not insignificant, but peak is also a limited part of the usage so.... We are also getting an EV in the next month or so - so night rates do appeal. I have 10 days to scrape the JSON from Mercury and see where our usage falls and cancel signing, or more likely will probably just go with their new contract ($2.32 daily, $0.1834 anytime, $0.1599 inclusive) being time poor :/

HelloThere

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#3034218 9-Feb-2023 20:21

Got the price increase letter from Genesis Energy so jumped on chat and they weren't interested in matching Mercury then they ended the chat so have signed up with Mercury at the cheaper everyday rate and will see what happens.

ANglEAUT

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#3034226 9-Feb-2023 21:10

itxtme: ... I have 10 days to scrape the JSON from Mercury and see where our usage falls ...

I'm pretty sure you can get a CSV export of your half hourly usage. They might even email it to you.

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jonathan18

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#3034248 9-Feb-2023 22:09

timmmay: The three tiered power pricing at different times of the day is a type of gamification. I moved to Mercury and it's SO MUCH BETTER not having to think about when you're using power. My wife didn't like the time based pricing at all.

We moved to Meridian from EK at the start of the year, and I must say I really miss the daytime ‘shoulder’ rates; it was far easier to justify using power-hungry things in the day when it was a good wack off full rates, whereas now it’s a matter of waiting until 9pm, given daytime rates are twice that of night. Will be interesting to see how much it costs running the ducted heating during the day in winter!

I can get that it would certainly be easier having flat rates all day, but being a family with two EVs it’s still probably worth us keeping a day/night split (my calcs showed Mercury wasn’t competitive for us.)

itxtme

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#3034249 9-Feb-2023 22:13

Yep you 100% correct, was too lazy looking at the download data, and didnt try the 3rd option, but it does the job!

jarledb

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#3034261 10-Feb-2023 00:03

michaelmurfy:

I do really like Octopus. I don't have to gamify my power use apart from charge the car overnight to save money. Plus they show their prices by default with GST.

I am a fan of them too. And Tessie for Tesla makes it real easy to just charge during the night time rates.

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timmmay

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#3034271 10-Feb-2023 06:31

jonathan18:

We moved to Meridian from EK at the start of the year, and I must say I really miss the daytime ‘shoulder’ rates; it was far easier to justify using power-hungry things in the day when it was a good wack off full rates, whereas now it’s a matter of waiting until 9pm, given daytime rates are twice that of night. Will be interesting to see how much it costs running the ducted heating during the day in winter!

The EK MoveMaster night rate for us increased to $0.1639 per kWh inc GST. With Mercury we're paying $0.015 per hour. So we lose the free hour, but otherwise we'll be paying lower rates, so we'll probably be about the same or a bit less.

I saw today in the Mercury portal (link) that prices are going up for people not on contracts soon, so if anyone wants to go to Mercury, move now. Referral link here, using that link there's some kind of bonus or gift but I don't know what it is. I think I get a day of free power, so it's probably something similar.

jonathan18

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#3034292 10-Feb-2023 08:02

timmmay:

jonathan18:

We moved to Meridian from EK at the start of the year, and I must say I really miss the daytime ‘shoulder’ rates; it was far easier to justify using power-hungry things in the day when it was a good wack off full rates, whereas now it’s a matter of waiting until 9pm, given daytime rates are twice that of night. Will be interesting to see how much it costs running the ducted heating during the day in winter!

The EK MoveMaster night rate for us increased to $0.1639 per kWh inc GST. With Mercury we're paying $0.015 per hour. So we lose the free hour, but otherwise we'll be paying lower rates, so we'll probably be about the same or a bit less.

Herein lies the danger of that ever-common question 'which is the cheapest power company?' I see on EV forums, as the answer is always 'it depends...' At least here on GZ there's an understanding of what that 'it depends' means!

As an example, here are the differences in calculations between companies and plans based on our usage (which was difficult enough to determine, given the different time periods of discounted rates etc); the base is what we'd have been paying now if we'd stuck with EK following their 1 Jan increases. None of the Mercury plans were competitive.

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