Profit-making EAC told to reduce electricity bills

[PolemIan]

The EAC changed their billing last year, admittedly without actually giving any explanation with it, which had a big change in the way the bills were calculated for Net Metering customers. It took me a while to cotton on though.

Bearing in mind that everybody who has net metering will have a number of variables - how many panels you have, how much you consume, the orientation of the panels, the thermal efficiency of the house, whether you are a ‘cold’ or ‘warm’ person etc etc. But for us, the new system works out cheaper this year than the equivalent bills for the previous EAC year and kind of encourage us to be a bit greener, I’ll explain.

Previously, the charges were based on the total KW of panels installed on the roof, plus a number of variable fees that were also calculated on installed panels.

If you remained in credit throughout the year, ie produced more than you consumed, you got a flat rate fixed bill every 2 months. If in the final bill you used a lot of electricity to keep warm over the winter, you may go in debit and were charged the normal rate for these extra units.

If you stayed in credit, you lost this after the final bill, usually in February, when the balance was reset to zero for the next EAC accounting year. This meant that if you had an oversized system installed, you were continually producing more for EAC, paying too high a rate per bill and then felt as if you were losing out at the end of the year.

So if you had a big credit, like we do this year after such a mild winter, you might subconsciously think “right, it’s a flat rate, I’m going to use it all up” even if you didn’t need to use it, so you’re kind of calling for power when you don’t really ‘need’ it that EAC have to produce. There’s less incentive to to that now, so less waste.

In the new billing, they’ve stripped out a lot of the extra charges and introduced a flat rate for the power you draw from the grid - during the day if the house needs more than the panels can produce, and everything at night when the panels are inactive (unless you have batteries as well). That’s the rate of £0.0288 shown on Max’s post. Roughly speaking thats around an 80% discount compared to the bill of a non net metering property - the conclusion I’ve come to comparing our bill to the bill for our other place that we rent out which has no net metering.

Comparing the bills for this year to those with the fixed rate bills of the previous style, in our case we are €46 better off for the first 5 bills of the year, and given the weather, even in all electric, but very well insulated property like ours, we should still be better off after adding in the final bill at the end of this month.

Having asked our installer about the changes, there are several reasons behind the change. The main being that they’ve accepted that a flat rate doesn’t work because of all the variables and that they are now being more flexible in terms of people adding a few extra panels because they can’t police it.

To me it’s just unfortunate that it looks like you’re being charged for electricity, we always were, it was just hidden in the flat rate and it s now more visible. It would be incredibly naive to think that you shouldn’t pay to be connected to a network that you send power to and call for for power from, which has significant operational costs to keep it going.

As I said above, everybody’s situation will be subtlety different, but for us, the money billing works out better financially, encourages systems to be the right size for needs, is simpler, and more transparent.

Ian

[PW in Polemi]

Very clear explanation, Ian. Thank you.
I would just add that I understand that the itemising of various charges on the EAC invoices was something insisted on by the EU, possibly after the financial crisis over here. This itemisation was supposedly a requisite for opening up the electricity generation and supply market to competition. After all, if nobody knew how much it cost EAC to read the meters, how could a potential competitor tender for the job ....

[Jim B]

There isn't the market in Cyprus for competition as said in earlier posts.
Unfortunately it's not that easy to switch from oil to gas as theres alot more involved than just changing the burners.
The company I worked for designs and constructs Power Stations and the last one I was involved with was nearly twice the size of Dhekilia which is about 460 Mw and that was to provide power to ICI Rock Savage in Runcorn.
I've found EAC staff very courteous and helpful and I think the people on the front line earn every cent they get.

A small Nuclear Power Station is what's required.

Jim

[Jim B]

We did the FEED (Front End Engineering & Design:) for 12 Nuclear Power Stations in the Emirates;. Its the way to go and very clean.

Jim

[Jim B]

We did the FEED (Front End Engineering & Design:) for 12 Nuclear Power Stations in the Emirates;. Its the way to go and very clean.

Jim

[WHL]

We did the FEED (Front End Engineering & Design:) for 12 Nuclear Power Stations in the Emirates;. Its the way to go and very clean.

Jim

Ive got an open mind, but with regular earth quakes over here in Cyprus, is it a risk, worth taking?

[trevnhil]

I think YES as because it would be made Earthquake proof

[WHL]

I think YES as because it would be made Earthquake proof

Didn't they say the same thing about the Titanic?

[trevnhil]

No, it wasn't earthquake proof