Archive for June, 2009

Whilst there seems to be an almost hysterical hype surrounding supposed alternative or green energy resources, in 2010 the UK government will be introducing a Feed-In Tariff to “help promote solar power and reduce carbon dioxide emissions” which on the face of it seems to provide genuine incentive for UK businesses to invest in solar energy with both financial and environmental benefits.

A Feed-in Tariff (FIT) provides a long-term financial incentive for people to invest in renewable energy. Under a FIT system electricity companies are obligated by governments to buy renewable electricity at above market rates.

The Feed-in Tariff will help reduce global warming, boost UK clean-tech jobs and reward people for installing solar power.

It is important the Feed-in Tariff is set at the correct rate. If it’s too low the potential for a massive increase in the UKs solar energy could be lost, and we could be left behind the rest of Europe.
We Support Solar website

Find out more about this by visiting the We Support Solar website and you can show your support for solar energy and the potential uses for business and domestic buildings by registering your interest in this scheme.

Are you using a domestic energy profile for your business? If so, there are considerable tax and insurance implications for your business. This article examines why these profiles exist, how to find out if you are using the wrong profile, what to do to change this and how a change would benefit the security of your future contracts.

Background

The original intention of all profiles was to structure pricing and consumption patterns to match the type of electricity usage. Simplistically 01 and 02 profile meters are intended for domestic properties whereas the commercial market starts off with 03 and 04 profiles, which are at the smaller end of business consumers and are typically ‘billed’ quarterly. 05 to 08 profiles inclusive are larger business consumers, billed monthly. There are still particular meters which might have upto 7 different rates based on time of day.The final profile the 00 or ‘half-hourly’ (the meter sends out via a radio signal, a reading every half hour). These are typically high use businesses. continue

To provide you with an overview of how the gas and electricity industry works, we have done some research and found this very media friendly video produced around 2 years ago [so a little out of date but the basic facts remain the same]. It explains the way the gas and electricity network works in relation to consumers and suppliers. Worth a viewing to get an overview of the subject matter.

Whilst liberalisation of the market is an imperfect method of improving the situation for both Business and Domestic customers, this along with some legislative requirements on the part of the government has shown some improvements. Some of the regulatory bodies discussed in the film were from a Business Energy Consumer fairly toothless in terms of addressing some of the hardline tactics of most suppliers. So once again Businesses need to be smart, manage their energy carefully otherwise it will cost!
continue