Reducing Monthly Fuel Payments With PV

[Nigel O]

Last November, my dual fuel energy provider did their annual assessment and decided that they wanted to increase my monthly payments by £6 per month. With having my PV system installed around the same time I got in touch asking for the monthly payments to be reduced by the equivalent of half of all the PV I am predicted to produce and not increased. That was on 24 November. Automated reply and then on 20 December, email from them to say it had been passed to the relevant department. January's payment went out at the +£6. Chased again on 12 January, response on 26 January now reducing monthly payment by £17 per month with immediate affect; also voluntarily raised the matter as a customer complaint given the time it had taken.

Success - oh no!

Entered my meter readings on 31 January, showing lower energy use as expected. So they have recalculated my energy costs and put them up by £11 per month, once again ignoring the PV generation, but slightly less than January as they had taken the surplus balance into consideration; probably through an automated system.

My PV system was registered with EDF on 1st December, so I would expect contracts within the next few months. EDF also provide my gas and electricity and up to know have been a reasonable supplier to us. As I have a disabled son, we are on the energy assist tarriffs that are very similar across all companies, so there is no financial incentive to change.

So how do people go about reducing their monthly energy payments when PV systems are installed?

[Richard Owen]

I'm with Good Energy.

They sent me a letter saying they were going to put up my monthly DD by £16/month the same month I put my PV in.

I phoned the call centre and pointed out to the nice, young lady, that I was in surplus with them, my consumption was about 1/2 the same period last year (due to the milder winter and some work I'd done on the house) and that I'd just put a PV system in.

Result: halving of the monthly payment with a note on the account to review in six months time.

Couldn't have been easier.

If you don't get anywhere, change supplier.

[JohnS]

The simple answer is that it will probably take a year to sort out a new average usage.

It compounds the seasonal usage problems that already exist.  By generating more in the summer and using some of it yourself, you will import less in the summer and therefore your summer usage will cost you less.

At some stage in a year or two, suppliers should be able to move to a system of crediting FITs against bills.  When this happens I shall only need to pay for 4-6 months in the winter.  I wonder if they will try and spread it over the year or if by then we shall have smart meters, or at least meter reading, with accurat monthly bills with variable direct debits depending on actual usage.

[defiler]

EDF tried to increase my DD 6 months after I transferred to SSE.  Needless to say that was stopped...
Yesterday I generated over half of my total usage for the day.  (Or rather I generated >8kWh, and my Owl reported ~14kWh, but as noted in another thread what the Owl regards as a kWh and what an electrical engineer - or your electricity meter - regards as a kWh are two totally different things.  The Owl reads high.  Guess I have a funny power factor.)  I'm keen to see the difference these panels make to my electricity bill in summer (sunrise at 04:30, sunset at 22:00).

[greentangerine]

E.ON have reduced my dual fuel monthly direct debit several times over the past two years without asking - presumably as the result of me posting regular meter readings against my account.  I've installed PV, solar thermal and then a wbs so both electricity and gas usage have dropped considerably.  

Not only have they reduced the monthly DD, but if your account is in surplus/credit on the anniversary of your contract, they pay the balance into your account so you start the next year at scratch.  I got £90 back last time and they reduced the DD again.

Given they always pay my FIT within three weeks of sending the reading, I'm pretty happy with them so far.

[Nigel O]

The seasonality is something else that could have caused wide fluctuation in Direct Debit (DD) amounts. With solar thermal we get enough hot water from April to October. So our gas boiler goes on from November to February / March and gas usage is high with the house occupied for the majority of the time. Over the summer months gas used is only a handful of units for cooking. The threshold a lot of the energy suppliers use to trigger return of overpayments could mean that after 2 -3 months of averaged DD payments, the money would be returned, DD reduced only to rise sharply again in winter when least welcome.

The seasonal affect is going to become even more pronounced now that the solar PV system is in. By wanting a three elevation installation I have sought to maximise the amount of self-generated power that we will use; lower hourly rates but spread over a longer period during the day with the east and west arrays helping in the morning and evenings when we typically use the most power.

If I can't get the matter of the extenuated seasonality resolved with my current supplier to even out DD's then I suspect I will have an interesting exercise in identifying an alternative supplier who can accommodate the challenges of domestic renewables.

[StationHouse]

Interesting to read other people experiences. I'm just submitting meter reading regularly but am not expecting any reductions in DD payments until I have a summer under my belt.

[M]

I joined EDF in July, then PV installed in August. I haven't contacted them about DD yet, as still early days, but after submitting my Dec import reading, they (I've done nothing) reduced my DD from £37 to £25. Nice!

M.

[bbkrob]

In the summer of 2010 E.ON reduced my monthly DD payment by £13 after refunding £36.22 to "zero" my account. Last summer they went back to the original payment as the account was negative. Its building up again partly due to the mild winter (so far) and the small benefit of PV installed at the end of November and extra loft insulation. Its SaveOnline 5.

I'm very happy with the way they are regulating the payments so far. I'm also happy with the free energy meter (CurrentCost). It has its limitations but it does confirm that the Aurora inverter is working and also shows me that my office is consuming 50% of the total electricity during the winter as I have electric storage heaters. I have added some extra sensors and written some code to download and analyse the data.

Despite a history of "cheapest is best" I'm starting to consider the value of good customer service. About 4 years ago they called to increase our DD and went on the explain how I could get a cheaper tariff which negated the need to increase the DD.

[Quakered]

We are with EDF and am well aware that they have a reputation for poor service that only N Power can exceed. However I have to say I have found their service to be excellent and are always prepared to discuss the annual assessment and they have always lowered them when I tell them of energy saving action we have taken. This included the roof, some of the solid walls and then all the solid walls and finally the PV. In every case they said they would reduce my payments and did so. Perhaps it helps that my estimates of reduced consumption have either been accurate or pessimistic! They were also helpful and friendly when registering my PV although I will concede they were not fast but then we were also in at the start of the FiT payments.

Glad to see they are now also one of the cheapest suppliers.

[langstroth3]

Interesting to read other people experiences. I'm just submitting meter reading regularly but am not expecting any reductions in DD payments until I have a summer under my belt.

Ditto.

We've had solar thermal for 3 years which causes our gas usage to fluctuate significantly between almost no use in the summer (cooking only); and average use in winter due to heating. I found that eventually the supplier seem to have adjusted to this and the DD pretty much equals out over the year - surplus in summer covering assumed winter use.

I can go on-line and request a reduction if I think too much of a surplus is building up. Sometimes this works to reduce DD; other times it's refused - it seems to depend on what ever algorithm they use to evaluate previous use. I also post meter readings on-line regularly which may help.

My DD went up for both Electricity and Gas in November as the unit charges were raised. I'm waiting for a few months of electricity use** now we have PV; and I'll then request a reduction....

**(As our import meter has just been replaced due to the old one running backwards, this won't be as much of a "reduction" as it might have been...)