One thing I spent some time over a few nights trying to verify was this often voiced claim from Bord Gais, "Natural gas prices in Ireland are already below the EU average …"
I decided to see if I could find any evidence that this was true or not, but I couldn't. I guess I'll just have to take their word for it.
What I can say is that it's not easy to find out what any power company is charging for natural gas. They clearly don't want people doing too much looking around. I found one UK company that was easy to see was charging less per kWh than Bord Gais, but there may be other costs that I'm not seeing.
I can say that compared with the rates charged by the local power company where I grew up, Bord Gais is charging an absolute fortune.
Niagara Mowhawk charges 1.19¢ per kWh, which equates to €0.0089 per kWh. Bord Gais is charging me €.04005 (5.34¢) per kWh. NiMo's connection charge is $29.42 (€22.07) for every two months and that includes 3 therms (87.93kWh). That compares with Bord Gais's supply charge of €57.14 ($76.23), which includes no gas usage.
Okay, so the cost of gas is more here. A LOT MORE. 349% more. [It will be just over 300% more when we get our big reduction.] But, okay, supply and demand and all that. But, what about the supply charges? Why is Bord Gais's supply charge 159% greater than NiMo's? (And let's just ignore those three therms.)
Now, I know that all these gas companies have all sorts of tariffs, etc. that confuse the picture, but I'm comparing the standard charge here with what looks like pretty much the only possible tariff with NiMO. 159%! That's a big difference.
{There were a lot of conversions here. Feel free to check my figures. I used xe.com for exchange rates and this page to convert therms to kWh.}
