Bonkers top electrical offer not necessarily the best option

Howlin

Hi all,

I was looking up on bonkers.ie for the cheapest electricity offers currently and I have noticed the top result is not necessarily the cheapest company to go with. Some offers include a cashback with the discount rate reduced. Bonkers do not include this cashback when calculating the cost per year.
If you check what the current offers the company’s provide, the top three offers are from Energia (E1), Bord Gais (BG1) and SSE Airtricity (SSE1). I compared these offers to the offers that provide cash back (€100 from Bord Gais (BG2), €120 from SSE Airtricity (SSE2), €100 from Energia (E2) and €175 from Electric Ireland (EI1)).
I picked the top three providers as examples, in case someone is currently with Energia and does not want to sign up for level pay with Bord Gais. The results are for a house with no gas and no night meter.
Attached is an excel sheet which I will be referencing. In the first sheet I compared the €100 cash back offer from Bord Gais to the offers offered by the top 3 for both rural and urban offers. I used an equation to work out how many units of electricity are required for both offers to result in the same price.
For example in sheet: 100 Bord Gais, I entered in the unit cost, discount offered and standing charge for the year for the €100 cashback offer and the top Energia offer. It showed if you consumed 4182 units of electricity in the year, the cost would be approximately the same for both offers. In cell I3 and I4, I used the calculated units of consumption and the unit cost and standing charges and discount to calculate the resulting cost. This shows if you go with the cashback offer with Bord Gais, in a year it would cost you €730.84 while if you went with the top Energia offer, it would cost you €730.86.
Overall this shows if you consume less than 4,182 units in a year, you would be better off monetarily going with the cashback offer from Bord Gais than with the top Energia offer. The same was repeated for the other three mentioned cashback offers.

I am currently with Energia, so the Energia offer and cashback options are not possible. I also do not want to use the level pay facility. This means either SSE Airtricity (SSE1), the SSE Airtricity cashback (SSE2) or Electric Ireland cash back (El1) offer is suitable.
The sheet called Compare Rural shows the units of consumption for each offer with respect to each cashback offer for each electrical offer to be the best. I have marked the Bord Gais offers and the Energia offers as red due to currently being with Energia and not wanting level pay with Bord Gais. The yearly consumption is approximately 4200 units. I will err on the side of caution and assume it will be 4400 units next year. Beside each remaining offer I used the equation to calculate the yearly cost with the offers costs in place for each offer. If I put in the consumption of 4400 a year, it will show approx. how much I will have to pay for electricity next year. This shows if I go with the SSE Airtricity 2 (Cashback) offer it would cost me €773.55 for the year, €776.07 with the SSE Airtricity 1 offer and €731.22 with the Electric Ireland cashback offer. This show under my current situation it would be cheaper to go with the Electric Ireland €175 cashback offer than the offer Bonkers suggest. This would result in €44.85 “extra savings” due to taking the cashback offer into account.

Let’s assume for a second, I do not mind using level pay. In the sheet: Compare 2 Rural, I have eliminated any options that contain Energia. Next I inserted the consumption of 4400 units into each of the remaining options. Looking at the costs, with the consumption of 4400 units a year, the best offer to go with would be still the Electric Ireland €175 cashback offer rather than the top available offer of Bord Gais. Using this method, it would produce “extra savings” of €28.34.

Let’s make another assumption again, and assume I was not with Energia but with say Panda Power and could move to Energia and I did not mind if I had to use level pay. In the sheet: Compare 3 Rural, no option was excluded and 4400 units were used. Looking at the costs, with the consumption of 4400 units a year, the best offer to go with would be still the Electric Ireland €175 cashback offer and not the top offer of Energia. Using this method, it would produce “extra savings” of €27.26.


Just to confirm this again, I calculated the cost for a year for each offer that is available in each Compare sheet. (Looking back over everything I have done, maybe all I needed to do was this and the other calculations and workings were not needed.)

It should be noted this is true for a house in a rural area and assuming the unit price stays the same during the entire year and the consumption does not exceed 4400 units a year. I also did not include the PSO levy as it is the same for all providers.

The same process is repeated for an Urban house in sheets Compare, 1-3 Urban. It can be seen if Energia and Bord Gais are excluded, Electric Ireland offer would be the best with an “extra saving” of €52.71, if Energia is excluded and Bord Gais is not, Electric Ireland would still be the best offer with an “extra saving” €34.95 and if no providers are excluded, Electric Ireland would still be the best offer with an “extra saving” of €30.83.
The difference between the “extra savings” for the Rural and Urban results is due to the different rates being applied to the supply of electricity for a house in a Rural and Urban area.

This is valid for my circumstances. I have provided the excel sheet, so in theory if you followed what I did, found no mistakes in my calculations, you could try it yourself to see which provider is better for you. All you would need is your yearly consumption and what are the current rates that are being offered and the cashback offers.



If you have any questions or querys about it do not hesitate to ask.


PS) I was bored over the weekend and decided to do this to keep myself occupied.

osarusan

I get great savings from running the gas off the electricity and the electricity off the gas.

sbsquarepants

Seems like an awful lot of effort you've gone to.

Realistically how much could you save yourself by doing all this?

Also - at a glance, your results seem to contradict themselves, but I could be wrong cos you know, jaysus Christ who has time for that!

Howlin

sbsquarepants: an extra €44.85 on top of the €251.92 savings suggested by Bonkers

irelandrover

Howlin wrote: »

sbsquarepants: an extra €44.85 on top of the €251.92 savings suggested by Bonkers

I did this recently as well, saved about 300 a year. Although i dont live in Ireland so my excel wouldnt help here.

I actually assumed most people would do this when they changed gas/elec

Howlin

irelandrover wrote: »

I actually assumed most people would do this when they changed gas/elec

The site bonkers.ie do compare energy providers for electricity and gas but in calculating the savings per year, they do not take into account the cashback offers that are provided. As part of their accreditation to be able to say they have, they are not allowed to take into account once off cashbacks.

sbsquarepants

Howlin wrote: »

sbsquarepants: an extra €44.85 on top of the €251.92 savings suggested by Bonkers

A lot of effort for 85 cent a week, no?

irelandrover

sbsquarepants wrote: »

A lot of effort for 85 cent a week, no?

that excel sheet took about 30 minutes tops. so its about 90 euro an hour.

Howlin

sbsquarepants wrote: »

A lot of effort for 85 cent a week, no?

Every little helps, is it not better for that 85 cent to be in your pocket instead of the electricity companys pocket?

I was also bored the weekend and was looking for something to do, so I decided to do that.

Also in replay to your earlier comment, I have attached a different excel sheet that might be easier to understand.

It has the costs for each the top three providers and the cashback offer.
If you put in your yearly consumption it will show how much it would cost to go with the provider for the year. To the right of that it will automatically show you the cheapest cost for they year and highlight the cell which it is so you can easily find which provider it is.

marcbrophy

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Is there a tldr version?

OP saved money by actually doing the math, rather than trusting a price comparison website!

Howlin

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Is there a tldr version?

The post that is before yours, with the excel sheet called Compare, is an easier excel to understand and gives a more straight forward answer.

Joe Hill

Prepaypower? ??

Ken.

Mod-Moved to Consumer Issues. Please read the local charter before posting.

L1011

Joe Hill wrote: »

Prepaypower? ??

First or second dearest in the market

Bonkers does not work cashback in and could easily have other edge-case issues. Its a rough reckoner really

meeeeh

marcbrophy wrote: »

OP saved money by actually doing the math, rather than trusting a price comparison website!

Someone from Bonkers stated once that they can't include one time cash back offers in their comparison. Which is fair enough because your saving won't be the same next year. That's old news.

That being said I didn't read the opening post so if someone discovered something else that isn't included then good for them.

neonsofa

Op I have a strange admiration for the effort you put into this. Hopefully it helps some people on here, fair play.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

The whole OP seems to be predicated on spreading the cashback offer. This is a one off non-recurring saving. CER has accredited Bonkers as accurate , up to date and easy to use. But it is still only a tool to assist in comparing tariffs.

dudara

Moved to Accommodation & Property

dudara

jimmycrackcorm

I don't think it's a big deal and to some extent I think the OP had wasted not only the time doing up an excel sheet but also a very long post.

I simply look at the normal usage costs and then decide is the callback worth it to me. In particular I also factor in that I'm a normal non sudoku fan in that I won't remember to the day when my contract is up so I'll end up paying the normal rate a lot longer than the contract. I'd hazard a guess that this is the behaviour that the supply companies bet on to give these cashbacks.

I don't think excel has a function for such behavior.

D_D

Surely it's completely dependent on your usage...

If you take your example below in your Excel sheet, using 4400KWh per year, Electric Ireland comes out on top as the cheapest. But who's to say you'll definitely use 4400KWh per year? If you keep everything the same in your spreadsheet, but change the usage to 5500KWh per year (for example), suddenly Energia becomes the cheapest.

Too much effort in all this for a few €€€ that maybe, possibly, could be saved. Just go with Electric Ireland and call it a day...

Howlin wrote: »

Every little helps, is it not better for that 85 cent to be in your pocket instead of the electricity companys pocket?

I was also bored the weekend and was looking for something to do, so I decided to do that.

Also in replay to your earlier comment, I have attached a different excel sheet that might be easier to understand.

It has the costs for each the top three providers and the cashback offer.
If you put in your yearly consumption it will show how much it would cost to go with the provider for the year. To the right of that it will automatically show you the cheapest cost for they year and highlight the cell which it is so you can easily find which provider it is.