Direct Energy rate hike?

[sr20s14zenki]

Anybody using direct energy and notice a rate hike? Usually my summer bills drop considerably, but i just got my bill and was charged 182$ for 670 kwh

[sr20s14zenki]

Well, called them. Apparently a plant went down, and that's why the rates got hiked, so if you aren't locked in, you're going to get a big bill....

[schurchill39]

Suuuuuuuuper

[Tik-Tok]

Ouch. So glad I locked in @ 8 Cents. Not too late to lock into 9 cents with Enmax though...

[Stewjoe]

Enmax all the way. 5 year contract @ 8.9c but you can get out with no penalties with 30 days notice. Most if not all other retailers have exit fees for contract rates.

[Unknown303]

Plants always go down I'm not sure how they use that to justify rate hikes. It's not like there are any new outages for thermal units in Alberta that are permanent.

[sr20s14zenki]

I locked in at 8.6 cents per kw hr and 5.99 per gj of gas. Same thing cancel with 30 days.

[Kloubek]

I've been on these alternate plans and always got screwed. As Stewjoe says - Enmax all the way.

[guessboi]

Easymax all the way! Bundle everything all in one bill and forget about it!

[ZenOps]

8 cents until 2017 for me, yay!

[themack89]

If you guys are curious....

http://ets.aeso.ca/

Electricity price in bottom right table.

Its fun to pull historical data and look at frequency / magnitude of price spikes. Things were going pretty crazy before and during the floods.

I believe ENMAX is opening a fairly large plant soon, and TransAlta (Direct I guess as well) have had significant losses in output recently. This is going to create some short term volatility but it shouldn't last too much longer until everything gets fixed.

Took the liberty of making a chart going back to end of Jan 2013.




Wtf was happening in April and May I have no idea.

[Unknown303]

Originally posted by themack89

Wtf was happening in April and May I have no idea.

Plant outages. Pretty much every spike will be a plant outage.

[themack89]

Originally posted by Unknown303


Plant outages. Pretty much every spike will be a plant outage.

Plant outages can cause spikes, but I doubt that pretty much every spike is caused by plant outages. Especially in Calgary with the volatile weather.

[Unknown303]

Originally posted by themack89


Plant outages can cause spikes, but I doubt that pretty much every spike is caused by plant outages. Especially in Calgary with the volatile weather.

But an extended plant outage coupled with high temperature days like in May can cause a lot of high price days.

[themack89]

Originally posted by Unknown303


But an extended plant outage coupled with high temperature days like in May can cause a lot of high price days.

Ohhhh you were referring to the April and May lol, I thought you were saying in general. Yeah I wasn't in town so that's why I said that.

Do you know which plants were out? Or was it just load shedding creating a supply squeeze?

[Unknown303]

Originally posted by themack89



Ohhhh you were referring to the April and May lol, I thought you were saying in general. Yeah I wasn't in town so that's why I said that.

Do you know which plants were out? Or was it just load shedding creating a supply squeeze?

Load shed is super rare. We have to be in it pretty deep before we shed load. It's normally once the reserves are used up that the pool price jumps to the 999.99 mark.

[themack89]

Originally posted by Unknown303


Load shed is super rare. We have to be in it pretty deep before we shed load. It's normally once the reserves are used up that the pool price jumps to the 999.99 mark.

Hmm... I didn't know that. I'm assuming you work in power then, kinda curious how much demand adjustment you witness from industrials when reserves get low or exhausted and price spikes?

[Unknown303]

Originally posted by themack89


Hmm... I didn't know that. I'm assuming you work in power then, kinda curious how much demand adjustment you witness from industrials when reserves get low or exhausted and price spikes?

During peak loading there are callouts made to industrial clients to reduce load. Usually it's a fairly responsive request. But they don't really account for a large portion of the demand in Alberta.

I definitely work for a Utility, working currently until 6am. But take what I say with a grain of salt. There are a million things that effect the price. I just find for some reason this year we've had unplanned outages on units during the worst possible times.

[Stewjoe]

Remember this?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmont...uts-power.html

We were asked(told) to shed load that day. I know we made plans to but I can't remember how much was taken down.