Bulb energy

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by embee

Well that's confirmed then, Bulb is bust. It appears that it is indeed too big (1.7M customers) for the direct transfer to the big six and it will go into some form of special administration. Basically a fudge.
The model under which the supposed free market competition was set up was clearly built on sand, unable to withstand a real stress test.
Guess who will eventually pick up the tab.

I'm with Bulb and received a long email from them last night. I didn't know they also had businesses in France, Spain and Texas too, which aren't affected. They also had a scheme where £2 was donated towards fighting climate change with each new member signing up. I joined because they advertised that their energy was all from renewable sources (gas supply was from a credit exchange plan). I've been satisfied with them and have never had any issues - I've been paying about £650/yr for a 4 bed dormer bungalow although I keep it fairly cool in the winter. It had just been raised to £840 (and I'm £175 in credit).

When a company is forced to sell a product for less than what they have to pay for it the end result will always be a collapse. The Conservative Party (and free market enthusiasts) were the ones that capped energy prices although Labour were for it, too. Suppliers were buying gas at 50p/Therm at the beginning of this year, now its 214p/Therm after briefly hitting 304p/Therm.

The spring price cap jump is going to be huge.

[SV650rules]

The unreliability of so called 'renewables' like fans on sticks, and solar ( only really viable for garden lights in UK, and then not really much use ) has splintered the market. The electrickery that comes through your meter is a mix of everything that supplies the grid. If customers of so called green energy companies had been disconnected when wind and solar failed to perform it may have made them realise that our grid is mainly fed from nuclear, biomass ( not in any way green ) and gas generations, and even coal at the moment.

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

The unreliability of so called 'renewables' like fans on sticks, and solar ( only really viable for garden lights in UK, and then not really much use ) has splintered the market. The electrickery that comes through your meter is a mix of everything that supplies the grid. If customers of so called green energy companies had been disconnected when wind and solar failed to perform it may have made them realise that our grid is mainly fed from nuclear, biomass ( not in any way green ) and gas generations, and even coal at the moment.

Irrelevant and off topic.
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Bulb energy has gone into administration simply because they and others had to buy natural gas at a much higher rate than what they were allowed to sell it for. They were selling it at a capped price through government policy so lost money on every cubic metre.

Since the government closed the Rough storage facility we have little buffer against fluctuating prices plus the natural gas market price has gone through the roof because of the opening up of world economies and the shortfall of deliveries from Russia. Europe's strategic gas storage had not been topped up either so every country is scrambling for limited supplies.

The US has plenty of natural gas but their capacity to liquify it is limited by refinery capacity, China has swept in and contracted the US supply for an extended period meaning that Europe is dependent on Russia and Norway.

[embee]

I may misunderstand things but I was of the impression that the final breaking point has been the limited ability of the smaller companies to hedge and buy forward due to smaller free capital/funds, they relied on a short term cash flow to sustain them assuming relatively stable wholesale pricing. It's very analogous to the banks failing and the subsequent revision of the regulations concerning minimum capital buffers being held.

I didn't know Bulb had those multi-national interests, sounds like the UK arm was separated from the parent.

It's always likely to be a problem when governments interfere and apply somewhat arbitrary constraints on what probably ought to be free market industries. I can't imagine that the price cap is anything other than a politically biased random number plucked from the air, something to give the impression that the government is "looking after" the consumer. I wonder how far the price cap was actually stress tested itself, did the economists/Ofgen/whoever consider what happens to the industry if the wholesale prices rise well above the cap?

Bulb was the biggest to go under so far, and the first considered too big for the distribution of customers to other suppliers to be viable. I believe it is the 23rd so called "supplier" to fail up till now. What is the future? Back to the big 6?

[Seeker]

The price cap was introduced because, at the time, there was a feeling that the big 6 energy companies were running a cartel. They were all raising their rates (at roughly the same time) above the rate of inflation and irrespective of the energy market costs. The price of natural gas had seemed pretty stable so it seemed to make sense, now, not so much.

One issue I have with the big 6 is that they are all foreign owned (except British Gas). Letting a foreign country own your infrastructure is crazy, imho, yet energy, railways, water are all mainly owned by foreign countries.

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by Seeker

Irrelevant and off topic.
______

Bulb energy has gone into administration simply because they and others had to buy natural gas at a much higher rate than what they were allowed to sell it for. They were selling it at a capped price through government policy so lost money on every cubic metre.

Since the government closed the Rough storage facility we have little buffer against fluctuating prices plus the natural gas market price has gone through the roof because of the opening up of world economies and the shortfall of deliveries from Russia. Europe's strategic gas storage had not been topped up either so every country is scrambling for limited supplies.

The US has plenty of natural gas but their capacity to liquify it is limited by refinery capacity, China has swept in and contracted the US supply for an extended period meaning that Europe is dependent on Russia and Norway.

It may just be me, but it seems stupid to rely on imported fuels for your energy needs when we have 400 years of coal in UK. Relying on imported stuff, and from countries that are not allies for strategic stuff like energy just shows how stupid our policy makers are, taken hostage by the green zealots. Germany presently runs 75 Coal fired power stations, and this reduces their need for Russian gas, although they still need it. As usual it is the people who can least afford it who are paying for this zero carbon malarkey - the British public.. The reason gas prices are sky high is that it is considered a 'green fuel' ( but so are woodchips, but that is another story ), and UK is burning humungous amounts of it to prop up unreliable renewables.. They even think it is a good idea to make everyone go electric while power stations burn gas to supply the ( expensive ) electricity to heat homes with crazy and expensive airsource heat pumps, which give marginally more energy than they consume when ambient temperature is low ( and you need the heat the most ), in summer airsource heatpumps give a reasonable return - but then you do not need the heating then.

[embee]

Originally Posted by Seeker

The price cap was introduced because, at the time, there was a feeling that the big 6 energy companies were running a cartel. They were all raising their rates (at roughly the same time) above the rate of inflation and irrespective of the energy market costs. ....

Good point well made.

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

It may just be me, but it seems stupid to rely on imported fuels for your energy needs when we have 400 years of coal in UK.

This is a thread about Bulb energy remember.

Anyway coal is dirty, a simplified formula is something like this:

C137H97O9NS for bituminous coal and C240H90O4NS for high-grade anthracite.

That's a lot of carbon to combine with the air during burning and thus make a lot of CO2. As can be seen it also has Sulphur (which will form Sulphuric acid during combustion and mixed with rain, it also causes cardio-vascular diseases), it also has Nitrogen which will form Nitrous dioxides (brown smog). We can capture the Sulphur, the Nitrogen and the CO2 hmm, not so much

We have no long term proven methods of capturing CO2 guaranteed to be permanent. If you don't believe in the ability of CO2 to warm the planet and destabilise the climate then burn away. If you believe in science, unless a proven carbon capture at source can be made to work coal is a no-no.

Natural gas is mainly methane CH4, a lot less carbon to burn and make CO2.

Every rotation of a wind turbine means that much less energy needs to be expended by a fossil fuel. Bad news on calm days, of course, but good news on windy days. Is it a final solution, no.

We should have started this 20 or 30 years when we were first forewarned not when the horse is out the barn and half way across the paddock.

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But Bulb energy went into administration because of the price cap, to get back on track. I liked Bulb - UK owned, great customer service, fair prices and they seemed ethical.

[redtrummy]

'We should have started this 20 or 30 years when we were first forewarned not when the horse is out the barn and half way across the paddock.'


Totally agree its a human trait to react when its nearly (hopefully) too late

[Bibio]

i thought the uk struck a deal with china for our power. there was supposed to be a deal struck that our wholesale power prices would not rise above £xx.