Today a couple of electricity-related things.... first, the mail had a letter (in a plastic envelope, grrrr) from Meridian which said they were "puzzled" by our monthly reading on Sep 24th for a total of 500kWh and they were sending their bean counter around to read our meter again.  But the letter wasn't clear on whether they thought our usage had veered into "puzzling" on the high or the low side of expected usage.  Puzzled by this myself (and with a dim hope we had befuddled Meridian by being spectacularly frugal with our energy use!), I accessed my old Contact energy account to look up last year's online bills. I used 535kWh in August 07. A 35kWh drop didn't seem that remarkable. Oh, well. Just then, the meter reader showed up and his reading today basically confirmed that last Wednesday's reading was correct.  So he too joined the ranks of the puzzled.

Secondly, Contact Energy is in the news for putting up their prices 12% which is causing howls of protest.  TV3's evening news had a sound byte from an advocate for the aged, who said that the price rises were particularly bad for the elderly, who will be forced to take to their beds earlier than usual with their electric blankets "as an alternative to keeping warm".  From personal experience, I can attest that a bed with an electric blanket is a very effective method to keep warm, not an alternative to keeping warm.  I tried it myself this winter and never needed to switch on the fan heater at all, I was that warm... this is why I got my hopes up that we had a meter reading so low it would actually raise a red flag in Meridian's system.

...  illness, which meant almost* nothing worth blogging happened anyway - I didn't make any rubbish, or buy anything, or even do anything except lie in bed and suffer. I'd just got out of bed at last and taken a shower, when I saw the fold-out mailer that arrived Monday from Contact Energy which starts with, "Jo, we want to make things right" on the front of the mailer, and "What would it take to keep you with Contact?" on the back. Of course, it was triggered when I switched electricity suppliers. Opened out, there's a begging letter; a Customer Service Rep will be contacting me to hear my feedback. I was rehearsing in my head what I wanted that feedback to be, when the phone rang. It was the Contact rep. I explained how I'd started at Greenpeace's Clean Energy and found that Contact was the worst environmental choice and Meridian was the best, and then checked Consumer's PowerSwitch and found that Meridian was also the cheapest source, which made the decision to switch a no-brainer.

First she told me that Meridian being the greenest source was "not 100% true" because the electricity from NZ's electricity generators all goes into the National Grid, so there's no guarantee that the electricity you get comes from a renewable source. Well, duh! I told her the point was to support the companies who use renewable sources to generate the electricity they put INTO the grid. I wondered, what kind of fool would fall for that particular argument? It didn't augur very well, intellectually, for the rest of our conversation.

She started telling me about the green initiatives Contact was putting in place, e.g. that all their sites are carbon-neutral ("like, we don't even have paper cups any more!"). I'd read the 2007 Sustainability Report on Contact's website, so I know that this claim excludes their emissions from electricity generation. I commended them for their efforts, but Meridian has the CarboNZero certification from Landcare Research for both the generation and the retailing aspects, so... Game, set, and match to Meridian.

She followed this by telling me that when NZ's electricity generating sources were divvied up, Meridian unfairly got all the green sources. "So it's not like they earned it or anything". It was embarrassing and depressing to listen to her argue it's not faaaaaaiiir!, like a whiny two-year-old.

She switched to the equally hopeless task of tackling the pricing aspect, and after admitting that Contact can't meet, let alone beat, Meridian on pricing, she offered Fly Buys points. I told her I didn't participate in Fly Buys, since I avoid flying... "Oh, me too! I hate to fly!" You can just see the script: *Rule No. 1. Always agree with the customer (create empathy)*. Before I could say that I don't hate to fly at all, she started to explain all the marvellous stuff like hairdryers and whatnot I could buy with Fly Buys points. Consumerism, yay! Sigh. Then she pulled out the big gun - a $100 bribe/credit on my account. I turned that down too, since I'll save that over time with Meridian. DD told me that companies tend to maintain their price point, so that if Contact drops their prices, Meridian will likely drop theirs too, to keep their position as the lower-price option. At this point, the Contact rep. gave up.

I immediately rang Mum and told her that if her DH still refused to switch to Contact, she might be able to get $100 knocked off the bill by switching to Meridian anyway, and letting Contact bribe her back again!

* "almost nothing" because one company found a novel way to send me a small but completely useless piece of plastic, but that's tomorrow's post.

I looked at my online electricity bills for the past few months a couple of days ago, and discovered I stand to benefit from switching to a low user plan, because I use less than 8000 kWh p.a. (I've used around 5300 over the last 12 months).  I rang Contact Energy this morning and requested to be switched over to the Anytime & Economy (Low User) plan.  Now I will pay a higher amount per kWh for both my meters (20.344 for Anytime up from 17.602, and 16.688 for Economy up from 13.322) , but a much lower amount for the fixed daily charge (29.997 down from 97.380).  Based on my usage over the last 12 months, I'm told I can expect to save $120 a year overall.  Because I'm signed up for SmoothPay, I always get the 10% prompt payment discount, so I've quoted the with-discount numbers.  SmoothPay is the plan where you pay a set amount each month by direct debit, enough to cover your annual consumption divided by 12.  You pay more than you need to in summer, and build up a credit, but then there's no nasty spikes in winter as compensation.   Once it's set up, it makes budgeting and planning so much easier, in my opinion.  You just set it, and forget it.

Our council offers the same scheme for paying rates - they direct debit my account monthly, and I don't have to worry about setting money aside for a large quarterly payment.  I used to waste a lot of money with late payment penalties on my rates because I would forget to put aside money during the quarter to make the rates payment when it fell due.  Or, even if I had the money available, I would often just plain forget that the rates needed to be paid by the end of the quarter.  Paying it every month automatically is far and away the easiest and least expensive method for me.

Even though I'll now be paying less overall for electricity, the higher cost per kWh means I now have a greater incentive to conserve my electricity usage.  This is also good, because to be honest, I haven't made that much effort to conserve power in the past.  My <8000 kWh profile comes from there only being a couple of people living here, usually, not from me running around religiously switching lights off.  This winter, with all the publicity about our low hydro lake levels, is the first winter I've tried to avoid using the fan heater.  I have a crockpot and a microwave which I should use more, instead of using the stovetop, and a handmower which I can use instead of the electric mower.

http://www.contactenergy.co.nz/web/pricingPlans?vert=fh&city=RICHMOND&suburb=&supplyType=electricity