Pay more for using less electricity? It must be an episode of Killinaskully...

Last year, the ESB devoted a considerable amount of resources to the education of the general public in calling it by its new name - Electric Ireland - from last January. The full force of its public relations campaign in the media promised a bright (excuse the pun) new future under the new title. The Electricity Supply Board was set up in 1927 under an act of law and it established a corporate body to control and develop Ireland's electricity network. By and large, it succeeded in its aims and it would be churlish to deny it that credit. However, it will now need to roll out that PR machine to explain in detail why it has decided to introduce a new 'standing charge' which will affect up to 100,000 customers. Ripley would hardly believe what the ESB (I'm deliberately using the old name) is doing. These customers will get higher electricity bills - because they are not using enough electricity! It's true - economising will get you nowhere. That's for the birds. The image of anxious householders going around from room to room, switching off lights, unplugging television sets, even turning off the baby's nightlight will be a thing of the past as we all march confidently into the world of Excessive Supply Bondage. From 1st February, the ESB introduced a new low usage standing charge which will apply to all households which use on average less than two units or less in any billing period, which is about 61 days. Pol Pot wouldn't have dreamed up this crazy concept. Householders who are not using enough electricity, according to the ESB's directive, are seeing their bills upped by 15.5 cent a day or €9.45 per two-monthly bill. That's about €56.70 a year. That's akin to the Meath Chronicle charging the reader an extra 50 cent for reading just the news but not the sports pages. News of the increase has been conveyed to domestic customers through inserts in their bills in the past fortnight. One of them, Philip Campbell, who lives in Harolds Cross, Dublin, is quoted in the Irish Times as having cut his electricity usage dramatically in the past few months to save money. His bills used to be about €250 but has got that down to between €80 and €125 per bill. He says he has done it by being a lot more careful about his usage. It caused him some amount of alarm when he got notice of the new penalty last Thursday. "It's just annoying to think that I've been making all this effort to save electricity and now I might be charged more. I think I would easily sometimes use less than two units a day," he said. Step forward the ESB with its explanation. The increase is "really aimed at vacant dwellings and premises, or holiday homes that are vacant most of the year". The average daily use over the billing period would be measured, a spokesperson said. It has put its PR department's best brains to work on what two units a day will do for you - a small fridge-freezer on all day, cooking on a small plate for 20 minutes, having four 60W bulbs on for three hours, or by running a cycle on a washing machine. It complains that the company is incurring losses on dwellings "with very low consumption" of electricity. There are ongoing costs, including meter reading, sending out bills, administration, customer service, which are associated with providing electricity and it has been making a loss on about 10 per cent of its accounts. We are told that the average household uses 14 units per day. However, we are not all "average". Some of us are individuals who are cautious, thrifty and anxious to save our cents in these straitened times. So the ESB takes a scattergun approach to their 'problem' by lumping in the 'guilty' (low energy users) with the 'innocent' (high energy users). The ESB's PR department puts up the poorest of explanations for the new charge. It says it's the only way it can retrieve its "losses" on these low-bill accounts. I have another suggestion for them: why not just do occasional meter readings and send out fewer bills to households with low usage. That should cut down on administration costs. Meanwhile, we should be giving consumers like Philip Campbell a medal for his careful shepherding of a valuable national resource.