Re: ESB & Bord Gais Bill
Well I think we're entitled to the 'unscrupulous utility' viewpoint for several reasons:
- the astronomicial ESB salaries (on average over 72k p.a. reported recently, and voer 100k p.a. in one of the generating stations)
- the continued obstructionism, by the ESB, of things such as commercial, micro generation, and until recently, wind
- I'm not sure your statement vis-a-vis TV's is correct (but I will check it). This is the sort of stuff we saw advertised with regard to the Power of One, and turning off all those red LED appliances. I monitored my broadband router - which is on 24/7 btw - and it has consumed a mere 0.05 inside the last month.
The astronomical ESB salaries story has led many people to think that everyone in the ESB is on €72k or more. I know on the other hand that the typical pay rate of an ESB Customer Supply call centre employee- the person who answers the phone when you have a query - is about €14 per hour and the vast majority of other clerical staff in that company are not paid that much more.
Many of the public seem to think that average equals typical and of course it doesn't. If, for instance, I work for a company of two and I'm paid €20k and my boss is paid €200k our average pay is €110k.
There are indeed very highly paid and highly skilled people in the ESB. Some Network Technicians, for instance, are getting generous annual payments but then they are, for example, on call to deal with supply outages at all hours of the day and night and in all weathers. Getting a call at home on 9pm on a winter's night to travel maybe 30 miles to fix a fault that might take several hours in isolated terrain comes with a price and I for one don't begrudge it if it gets my electricity back in a reasonable time.
A large company like ESB with a presence across the globe requires a lot of highly skilled IT staff, financial experts, professional engineers and the like and they don't come cheap anywhere. If you pay peanuts.....
Power station workers are probably the highest paid on average and, yes, that comes in large part from the muscle they were able to wield in past years: if they didn't get their way the lights went out. However, their numbers are diminishing what with the reduction of market share of the generation market by ESB (currently only 38%) and the sale of many power stations. The last time the lights went out due to power station worker strike action was in the 1970s.
Remember also that these average salary figures factor in things like pension entitlements over time so that they do not represent the real working salaries on a weekly or monthly basis.
I would wager that if an exercise was done to get the average salary of, say, Bord Gais or bank employees the result might not be that much different.
And despite all that the Regulator has confirmed that salary costs account for only a miniscule portion of the cost of electricity - the major factor is the cost of fossil fuels for generation and we in Ireland are hugely dependent on imported fuels the cost of which has risen dramatically over the last 10 years.
ESB has within the last couple of weeks launched a very attractive microgeneration support payment system whereby customers will be paid 19c per unit for anything exported into the grid. (This will always only be of benefit to a tiny number of wealthy customers who have the means to purchase sufficient generating systems to supply their own homes and have capacity to feed into the grid). The ESB has also been fully in support of wind generation for several years and has it's own wind power subsidiary Hibernian Wind Power and has several wind power sites around the country.
Believe the difference in power consumption of plasma TVs as against the old CRT sets. A huge difference. A broadband router my contrast is very small usage wise. As a matter of interest why do you have it on 24/7? I always switch off mine after I finish an internet session - I would be fearful of hackers and the like to leave it on all the time.
Regards,
Fnergg