Ruthf wrote: ↑Fri Sep 24, 2021 4:01 pm
Ecotricity has green electricity and is investing heavily in green gas too so that’s a big draw for me. Final price for economy 7 is 10.7p per kWh. Not bad and I trust Ecotricity’s environmental ethics and claims
Fair point, but Octopus is also green, and does better in surveys of customer service / satisfaction. And it has a relationship with VW which gets one a welcome bonus and access to deals with Ohme.
We were with Ecotricity, but found their customer service poor, so looked around and picked Octopus (before discovering the VW/Ohme tie-ups).
If you're happy with Ecotricity, the difference in pricing probably isn't enough to justify a change, and - over the next few months - could easily change (but I've no idea what any company is going to be charging in six months' time, and I doubt even the companies have more than a vague plan).
I find these claims hard to swallow at times. Currently 36.5% of the UKs energy is coming from fossil fuels. 39% from renewable and 23% from Other.
There are so many companies now claiming 100% renewable but I think 'How is that possible 100% of the time?'
Ecotricity have their own infrastructure to generate green electricity which they feed into the grid.
Green electricity
Ecotricity was the first energy company to offer its customers green electricity. We started with one windmill in Gloucestershire and have carried on building new wind and solar parks around Britain. Whenever a home or business switches to Ecotricity for their electricity, they stop using fossil fuel to power their home and start using green energy.
Other energy companies have followed our lead, and today around 33% of the energy used in the UK comes from green sources. But there’s still a long way to go, and there are still fossil fuel power stations across the country, coughing carbon dioxide into the air. We want to stop that by continuing to build wind and solar parks as we grow, as well as exploring other ways of producing electricity sustainably.
Green gas
Across the UK, we still heat our homes and businesses using fossil fuels – mainly natural gas. About 1% of the gas we supply today is green gas from sustainable sources. The rest is carbon neutralised gas – we invest in carbon reduction programmes to cancel out the carbon burned.
This isn’t our ideal solution, and at first, we thought the best route was for the country to switch from gas to green electricity for its heating and cooking. However, we now see green gas as the way forward. We believe we can build enough green gas mills – making biomethane from grass cuttings – to replace natural gas in the grid. When the grass grows back, it absorbs the carbon dioxide created by burning green gas. Then we cut the grass and make more green gas, and the sustainable cycle repeats itself.
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I'm all for green/renewable energy, I've invested heavily in PV myself and will be looking at a storage solution in the coming months, but my point is that these companies are claiming something that isn't strictly true.
Where are Ecotricity getting their energy from after 9pm on a still day? As for Green gas, 1% of their total supply is green gas the rest is natural gas, So in order to be 100% green they are offsetting which is my issue, it's not really green.
nunp wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:34 am
Quick update - just received an email from Octopus apologising for the miscommunication and confirming that as I started the onboarding process before the price increase on the 22nd Sept that they will honour the previous GO tariffs - I.e circa 15p Per KW and the usual 5p from 00:30 to 04:30. Needless to say I’m relieved and delighted - more importantly Octopus have sorted it.
Excellent news nunp! I'm assuming that's locked in now for 12 months for you ?
Yep confirmed for 12 months. Good timing on my part - just.
nunp wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:34 am
Quick update - just received an email from Octopus apologising for the miscommunication and confirming that as I started the onboarding process before the price increase on the 22nd Sept that they will honour the previous GO tariffs - I.e circa 15p Per KW and the usual 5p from 00:30 to 04:30. Needless to say I’m relieved and delighted - more importantly Octopus have sorted it.
Excellent news nunp! I'm assuming that's locked in now for 12 months for you ?
Yep confirmed for 12 months. Good timing on my part - just.
Nice. You'll probably have the cheapest electricity in the country
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nunp wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:34 am
Quick update - just received an email from Octopus apologising for the miscommunication and confirming that as I started the onboarding process before the price increase on the 22nd Sept that they will honour the previous GO tariffs - I.e circa 15p Per KW and the usual 5p from 00:30 to 04:30. Needless to say I’m relieved and delighted - more importantly Octopus have sorted it.
Excellent news nunp! I'm assuming that's locked in now for 12 months for you ?
Yep confirmed for 12 months. Good timing on my part - just.
Where are you in the country? Have you considered offering your cheap rate to others?
Northamptonshire. There are a fair few wind turbines 10 miles up the road and a solar farm? Would that make difference? Can’t get this tariff now - 23p perKW if I signed now
A warning to anyone considering Ecotricity - their IT systems are suspect. For inexplicable (and unexplained) reasons, they still haven't registered the fact that I switched from them over a month ago. Emails from Ecotricity all have "no-reply" addresses, so one either has to use the website messaging (which, in my experience, doesn't produce any action) or telephone (which involves the usual presentation of multiple options and wittering about "experiencing high call volumes".
This has capped off a series of more modest incidents of poor customer service, and has made me even more pleased to have shifted to Octopus.
Of course, this is just one person's experience - Ecotricity has many very satisfied customers.
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