Electricity Prices

Sound like a recipe for contamination of your drinking water to save peanuts.

In a bit of a brain fart I somehow thought it was for your house.

Assuming just for the cattle it’s not a bad plan but not sure how long the payback would be to put in a 10k litre concrete tank (assuming 100 cows).

After reading this thread I decided to calculate how much electricity I am using at the moment per cow, per day. Averaged over a week

It worked out at 0.46 units per cow per day.

0.26 on Day Rate and 0.20 on Night Rate.

Obviously this is Sept so the water bill and milk cooling bill would be a lot lower than peak summer months.

Just the farm on this meter and no other livestock.

theres very little difference between them, a cent here or there

Very little in them if you stay with them, but usually discounts for new customers so worth shopping around yearly. Got a 32% discount with Bordgais and free use on Saturdays.

I now try to save the welding/ 3D printing for Saturdays. Use automation and timers to control heavy appliances and pumps for times with cheapest rates.

Use an automation with weather forecast to predict if solar hot water needs to be supplemented with immersion on night rate based on cloud cover forecast.

Going to get a new vacuum Kettle that doesn't need to be reboiled for hours.

Monitoring usage, is useful for finding appliances that are using power but providing very little service. There are energy kits available to borrow free from all county Libraries. https://www.meath.ie/council/council-services/libraries/home-energy-saving-kits

Yes @whelan2 that is particularly good advice in the days before a price increase. Of course it's automatic now for anyone with a smart meter.

As often as needed I'd guess, but that will vary depending on width/length of passage and number of cows. Cutting out scrapping too much will increase the power used by the scraper if it has to push too large a volume of slurry in front of it and increase wear/tear. You could use a clamp meter to see how much power it consumes with different timings, while checking how clean the passages are being kept if you wanted to experiment with lower frequency.

Yes

Did you get the ‘free use on Saturdays’ with Bord Gais over the phone?

I went with their One Big Switch deal for the house the other day but didn’t bother switching Farm a/c as mainly sheep here so usage wouldn’t be serious.Have credit built up on farm a/c as well.

Was it the One Big Switch deal you availed of as it’s 33% off for first year with them?

My mother texted yesterday evening that her electricity contract was going to be out of date soon, I was assuming in a few weeks, but she said tomorrow. I went onto bonkers.ie and luckily electric Ireland will keep them on the same plan they're on ,14% saving. There were 4 other offers on the screen, no savings on any of them. Prepay power and flogas the providers. I'd say they'll have to pay full whack for a couple of weeks until it comes into place

No. The fact the contract was out of date so soon I was sort of panicking

Don't think so tbh,I availed of One Big Switch deal on last day it was available.....last Friday....33% off, I also signed up online....where did you see that you have free electricity on a Saturday?.......got phone call from Energia today as Bord Gais had obviously contacted them to take over provider service.....best Energia Salesperson would do was 10% of this years contract so I said thanks but no thanks.

Got the same phone call from Energia, but they couldn't match

The plan I signed up for is called Saturday Free Time, between 9 and 5 it is free to use as much as I like.

Don't energia have a quota of what you can use at the reduced rate?

Don't they all? Definitely no reward for loyalty with any of them?

Reduced rate as in night rate? I don't think so, energy providers get ver low rates at night possibly free for them at times. Don't think they offer free time to customers though.

BordGais have a fair usage policy on free units of 100KWh per month which we are doing our best to get to but will probably fall a bit short.

was with Flogas and nearly got rode bare back and side saddle combined when the contract ended.

Luckily I wasn't on a smart meter at the time and avoided most of it.

Possibly........... but do you live alone? or with family?

2 teenagers here can increase power consumption significantly when they are around.

Nobody can really answer this for you. Smart meter only tells you what comes in not where it goes. Book an energy testing kit from your county Library and monitor individual appliances you could be surprised. Even a multimeter with Clamp Meter if you have one / can use one will highlight what's really power hungry.

for example a basic PC may consume 50W but a Gaming PC playing a Graphics intensive game 500W, 2 Gaming PC's in this house but are banned during the peak hours. A TV could vary from 50 - 300W depending on age and size.

Electric oven could be3000W, Kettle 2000W toaster 1000 - 2500W

Water Pressure pump 600W, Modern Septic tank 100W for compressor and 800W when pump kicks in.

An Old chest freezer could be consuming much more than a new one.

Appliances on Standby, Chargers plugged in and nothing charging.

Smart meters also show half hourly usage which is not that useful.

I made a monitor that captures the flashing light on the meter on converts to real time usage which is useful for finding exactly what is being consumed right now.

Had online meetings this morning so Kettle went on a lot must get a vacuum flask type kettle to save re-boiling

Most likely will be very skewed by estimated billing and differences in power consumption between Sept/Oct.

Just checking on bonkers.ie and I can save approx €120 by going from 5.5% discount night rate to 10% but this is only available through bonkers. It has a new contract term of 1 year. Its electric ireland. Is it safe enough to go through Bonkers.ie?

I've used bonkers.ie for the last 5 or 6 years, no problem

I'd look for a cheque and not presume it's lost tbh. They'd chase you for payment if it were the other way.

Switched in September, but discounts for switching I hear have been cut in half since then.