Switching electric/gas providers (see first post for links)

Same here. It didnt activate smart meter when I registered with ESBN to see usage data. I was with energia at the time

I was able to sign up for this online today, got confirmation of sign up accepted... Suppose I wait and see that they honour it!

I must say this whole flogas BWG and now community offer is very strange indeed. I'm not complaining cause I'm a heavy user at 8k ish units a year,

Both offers are far lower than the competition and not clickable from the home page on their website. You have to know the domain. The links go up and down often. Also often the "sign up online" button changes to "cal us for offer". Sometimes you ring and they say offer is over(yet link may still be there)

They don't vet to see that you work for BWG and now they changed the offer to be for everyone by calling it community, and still it's not navigable from their homepage.

Not strange at all, it's textbook case price discrimination.

When you show that the rates you're paying today are roughly in line with 2019, i.e. the same percentage increase as the wholesale, it's interesting but it makes the story appears simpler than it is.

Obviously, there is the hedging aspect, which means you should be looking at average prices over a longer period in the past than just the 4 previous months. And when you do, this "same %" story vanishes, and that's normal, because that's not how retail pricing works.

Wholesale prices are just a part of the retail price. Pass-through charges haven't doubled, so what does that tell us on commercial margins ? They don't need to double when wholesale prices double either, for the suppliers to remain profitable.

Lastly, what I think is important is that we may have a different picture today in terms of the distribution of the deals customers have.

Back in 2019, it was common to have 40% discounts. To simplify, the distribution was >80% non-switchers on standard rates, and <20% switchers on 40% off discounts.

Today, switchers are getting maybe 15% discounts. Maybe the number of switchers have increased, though. And these figures are linked, obviously, you can only offer a 40% discount if that's to a limited number of your customer base.

The question then is whether this new distribution will remain, and for how long.

On the Flogas offer, you're showing that they're good rates. They definitely are, as of today. My only concern with this offer is that it's a fixed rate for 12 months, and that it may gradually become less and less of a good deal over that period. I would favour a deal with similar rates (even slightly higher), but variable. And I would expect to see such a deal around this Autumn, when the first round of price drops should happen, with I hope also an increase in discounts for switchers.

Is there a breakdown of wholesale prices for day / night kw?

Our electricity supply wasn't sold off it was changed from a monopoly to a competitive market, I shudder to imagine what we'd be paying if the ESB were the only provider 😡😡

Considering the government gave everyone €600 last year to assist with the price of electricity, we would probably be paying less and it would be government subsidised. Electric Ireland (which is the commercial entity ESB became) made no profit last year on their residential business.

In terms of the Flogas BWG offer for 1 year Electricity standard what are the prices? I can link to this page for the offer, but can't see the actual prices:

Any pointers would be great? (read a few pages back but may have missed it)

Around 500,000 residential customers switched last year out of around 2 million. So only 25% of people would be on the very good discounts (the actual figure being slightly higher because you don't necessarily have to switch to get the discount).

There are very few people in the world who would gleefully cut off electricity to somebodies home. It is a strange claim.

Considering the only government owned electricity company in Ireland who have a 50% market share operated with a 0% profit margin and legally would be unable to have that any lower, there's no evidence to support what you're saying. Its anti-government rhetoric and baseless. I dont believe any fact, figure, or argument will change your position.

And it would have made the subsidy better targeted than this blanket €600 for every household, regardless of energy consumption (size of household, holiday homes, dual fuel or electric only ...). I think we're better off with a competitive market in general, but last year's state intervention is one of the rare situations where a monopoly would have been more efficient.

When you put the government in a position to decide on the price, they will set that price to maximise their personal political capital, by making the voter happy. That would be ultimately at the expense of the taxpayer, so in many cases it's the same person getting lower bills today and higher taxes tomorrow, but in practice, the trick works politically.

Why not try and switch now? You can set the switch date to be after the cooling off period which means you wouldn't be charged an exit fee.

Obviously you weren't paying electricity bills back in the monopoly days, anyway enough has been said about it. I for one, am very glad there's competition in the market.

https://www.flogas.ie/flogas-community-plan-electricity-fixed-1-yr.html