Electricity Suppliers
Date updated: 19th September 2009
| Good Energy info | Green Energy uk info | Npower Juice info | Ecotricity info | EDF Energy info |
Good Energy - www.good-energy.co.uk
Good energy are an electricity supplier who supply 100% renewable electricity only. All the electricity they buy is produced using wind, solar, water etc.
Good energy will pay you for the total amount of electricity that your PV system produces, regardless of whether you use the electricity or
it gets sent back to the grid. They currently pay 15p for each unit (kWh) of electricity generated by your PV system, which in the case of a
3kWp system would amount to £360 for a year.
This means that you will receive money depending on the size of PV system, and you will not have to pay for electricity all the time you use
less than the output of your PV system.
This works out a very good saving.
If you take our 3kWp system which will have an output of approx 2400kWh a year, and then work out how much those 2400kWh's would have cost you to
buy from your supplier, you will see how much you will also save on electricity. For most of the large suppliers at current prices, this will work
out to be around £360.
So you have kept your £360 for the year that you would have had to pay to an electricity supplier. You also have your £360 (tax free) paid to you
for the output of the system. And you can also work out how much more electricity you could buy with the £360 that you have been paid, this works out to
be an extra 2400kWh for a year.
Total Savings with your 2400kWh output PV system.... £360 + £360 =
£720 + 1½ to 2 tonnes of CO2 a year!
Using electricity that is renewable means that you are not going to be contributing to CO2 pollution or Nuclear waste. Take an average household usage of 3300kWh per year, using a very well known supplier, 1.2 tonnes of CO2 and 6.2grammes of high level nuclear waste(!) will be produced every year. Also, a surprisingly low level of renewable energy is used by the this well known supplier, only about 6%!
Green Energy UK - www.greenenergy.uk.com
Green Energy UK will buy electricity
generated from home generation system such as PV and wind. They offer two green packages.
Npower Juice - www.npower.com
Juice offers 100% renewable electricity by means of selling standard electricity to the customer, and promising to feed into the grid an
equal amount of electricity from renewable sources. The Juice package will buy PV generated electricity at 12p a kWh, for every kWh of electricity exported.
Ecotricity - www.ecotricity.co.uk
Ecotricity offer 12p for every unit of electricity you generate , whether you
use it or not. You need to inform Ecotricity of your meter reading which is then used to credit your bill for the electricity you generate.
EDF Energy - www.edfenergy.com
EDF offer two options for PV payback. One is for
installation where there is no kWh meter, and for this type they pay a flat rate of £10 per kW of system a year. System we fit, and in fact most
installed systems will be fitted with a meter to show what the system has generated to date. The second option is when you have a meter, they pay 7.64p per
kWh of exported electricity.
General
All the suppliers listed here do not charge a high rate fee for the first 900kWh's that are used. Many suppliers
charge this higher initial rate which penalizes you for using lower amounts of electricity. We came across one supplier who did pay for exported
electricity, but they charged an initial high rate for the first 900kWh, and the PV payback rate was less than their
second level rate.
This all means that if you were to use the 2400kWh's produced by your PV system, and then take 850kWh's from the grid
to make up you electricity needs, you would pay the highest rate for the low amount of electricity that you needed. Don't be conned into this type of package!