This week we are changing our electricity provider to Good Energy. I have been wanting to move to a ‘green’ supplier for a year now but had been hampered by the fact that our current supplier - EDF - had never sent us a bill!
Last April we installed a new meter on the farm and I changed from British Gas to SWEB. Almost immediately they were taken over by the French firm EDF, who wrote to me saying that the change would be seamless and there was no need to do anything – so we didn’t.
The months began to pass and we didn’t hear any more. So faced with the prospect of fiddling a foreign firm out of their cash we did what any right minded Englishman would do – crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. Take that Napoleon!
After about ten months I began to think the unthinkable. Perhaps they have forgotten us. Perhaps our file had been lost in the takeover and we would have free juice for life!
No such luck. Two weeks ago a bill came for £1,772.
Nothing we could do. It was a fair cop, so we simply took it on the chin, coughed up and promptly looked around for a renewable source for our power.
A bit of research on the ‘U’switch web site revealed that the market for green energy is not straightforward. There were a bewildering number of eco friendly firms on offer with wildly different claims. However, one stood out from the pack – the package being offered by Good Energy who claim to be “the only UK supplier that supplies only 100% renewable electricity” . Also, a fact that made them seem even more attractive to us, one of their main generating sources is the wind farm at Delabole, which was Cornwall’s first and the nearest to the farm.
This all looked entirely plausible, as their cost per Kw hour was about 10% dearer than any of the other ‘green’ tariffs on offer. To counter balance this, they do have a ‘Home Generation Scheme’ which rewards people who have their own wind turbine to the tune of 4.5p for every Kw produced on site. While we don’t have one yet, this is definitely something I would like to pursue as during the winter we have plenty of wind power to harness.
So we have signed up to guilt-free electricity, and now (with the dearest supplier currently available) have even more incentive to use as little of the stuff as possible.