Cyprus-Forum.com

[Paphitis]

You could end up with 3 to 5 energy companies. Some will even build their own power plants.

Saves the RoC a lot of money and consumers have a competitive market.

[Tim Drayton]

On Boxing Day (a public holiday in Cyprus) 2012, we had a power cut. I imagined that nothing would happen until at least the next day, the first working day. However, a few hours later I noticed vans from the electricity board out in the streets and went to see what was going on. I approached a group of electricity workers and asked what was happening. One of them, in a very polite and friendly manner, was happy to fill me in, in the foreign language of English, too. They said that there was a fault affecting three substations in our area and that they were sending three mobile generators out from Nicosia and they were going to instal one at each of the faulty substations and then our power would be back on. They then said when I woke up in the morning, the diesel generators would have gone and everything would be back to normal. And so it was. They worked through the night on a public holiday to rectify the fault. I do not believe that you would get this kind of service from one of the privatised electricity companies in the UK - not on Boxing Day.
In fact, until the Mari explosion, I had never experienced an unscheduled power cut in Cyprus, and even if they were going to make a scheduled power cut to do some work, they used to send out a postcard informing you of the time of the outage at least a week in advance. The one thing that I need to run my microbusiness is a reliable electricity supply, and I believe that a state monopoly is in a better position to do so. There is nothing wrong with the mixed economy model in my book. To say that all state run enterprises are bad and all private enterprises are good is a gross simplification.
Let us not hear the red herring about the most expensive electricity in Europe, either. That has to do with the lack of economies of scale on this small island.

[B25]

You could end up with 3 to 5 energy companies. Some will even build their own power plants.

Saves the RoC a lot of money and consumers have a competitive market.

I doubt it, no enough consumption for many more PS. Maybe one other, but any more becomes non cost effective.

[Paphitis]

On Boxing Day (a public holiday in Cyprus) 2012, we had a power cut. I imagined that nothing would happen until at least the next day, the first working day. However, a few hours later I noticed vans from the electricity board out in the streets and went to see what was going on. I approached a group of electricity workers and asked what was happening. One of them, in a very polite and friendly manner, was happy to fill me in, in the foreign language of English, too. They said that there was a fault affecting three substations in our area and that they were sending three mobile generators out from Nicosia and they were going to instal one at each of the faulty substations and then our power would be back on. They then said when I woke up in the morning, the diesel generators would have gone and everything would be back to normal. And so it was. They worked through the night on a public holiday to rectify the fault. I do not believe that you would get this kind of service from one of the privatised electricity companies in the UK - not on Boxing Day.
In fact, until the Mari explosion, I had never experienced an unscheduled power cut in Cyprus, and even if they were going to make a scheduled power cut to do some work, they used to send out a postcard informing you of the time of the outage at least a week in advance. The one thing that I need to run my microbusiness is a reliable electricity supply, and I believe that a state monopoly is in a better position to do so. There is nothing wrong with the mixed economy model in my book. To say that all state run enterprises are bad and all private enterprises are good is a gross simplification.
Let us not hear the red herring about the most expensive electricity in Europe, either. That has to do with the lack of economies of scale on this small island.

Usually, when things like electricity is privatized, they also privatize the grid.

The grid will go to private hands and they will be responsible for maintaining the network. They derive an income from charging electricity retailers and power stations a few cents per kW in transmission costs.

There will be 2 different types of electricity companies. Some will be mere retailers, whilst others will generate and retail as well.

The grid company will have its own service personnel and from my experience they are very efficient and prompt in dealing with issues because if their grid goes down, they lose money. Always remember very prompt responses on weekends but I can't recall if there was an instance on a major public holiday. Power outages were very rare. You probably get 3 to 4 per year and that is mainly during a heat wave.

[Paphitis]

You could end up with 3 to 5 energy companies. Some will even build their own power plants.

Saves the RoC a lot of money and consumers have a competitive market.

I doubt it, no enough consumption for many more PS. Maybe one other, but any more becomes non cost effective.

Yes Cyprus is small but you should still end up with at least 2, maybe even 3 if you're lucky.

Back home I reckon there are about a dozen energy providers.

[Tim Drayton]

On Boxing Day (a public holiday in Cyprus) 2012, we had a power cut. I imagined that nothing would happen until at least the next day, the first working day. However, a few hours later I noticed vans from the electricity board out in the streets and went to see what was going on. I approached a group of electricity workers and asked what was happening. One of them, in a very polite and friendly manner, was happy to fill me in, in the foreign language of English, too. They said that there was a fault affecting three substations in our area and that they were sending three mobile generators out from Nicosia and they were going to instal one at each of the faulty substations and then our power would be back on. They then said when I woke up in the morning, the diesel generators would have gone and everything would be back to normal. And so it was. They worked through the night on a public holiday to rectify the fault. I do not believe that you would get this kind of service from one of the privatised electricity companies in the UK - not on Boxing Day.
In fact, until the Mari explosion, I had never experienced an unscheduled power cut in Cyprus, and even if they were going to make a scheduled power cut to do some work, they used to send out a postcard informing you of the time of the outage at least a week in advance. The one thing that I need to run my microbusiness is a reliable electricity supply, and I believe that a state monopoly is in a better position to do so. There is nothing wrong with the mixed economy model in my book. To say that all state run enterprises are bad and all private enterprises are good is a gross simplification.
Let us not hear the red herring about the most expensive electricity in Europe, either. That has to do with the lack of economies of scale on this small island.

Usually, when things like electricity is privatized, they also privatize the grid.

The grid will go to private hands and they will be responsible for maintaining the network. They derive an income from charging electricity retailers and power stations a few cents per kW in transmission costs.

There will be 2 different types of electricity companies. Some will be mere retailers, whilst others will generate and retail as well.

The grid company will have its own service personnel and from my experience they are very efficient and prompt in dealing with issues because if their grid goes down, they lose money. Always remember very prompt responses on weekends but I can't recall if there was an instance on a major public holiday. Power outages were very rare. You probably get 3 to 4 per year and that is mainly during a heat wave.

I don't know about Australia, but in the UK there is one private company called Centrica which has the monopoly over the grid and then there is an illusion that various other private companies are in competition with one another, but this would only be true if they each had their own grids, which they don't. As Centrica has the monopoly over the grid, consumers cannot go anywhere else, so it is no great skin off Centrica's nose if there is an outage, especially in a small area because they just have certain percentage targets that they are meant to meet. Sorry, but I don't believe that they would have given that kind of service on a bank holiday.

[Tim Drayton]

It is an easy game to play I know, googling up stuff to support your own position, but the fact is that not everybody thinks that electricity privatisation in Australia was a success:

http://sourceable.net/australias-electr ... l-failure/

[Paphitis]

On Boxing Day (a public holiday in Cyprus) 2012, we had a power cut. I imagined that nothing would happen until at least the next day, the first working day. However, a few hours later I noticed vans from the electricity board out in the streets and went to see what was going on. I approached a group of electricity workers and asked what was happening. One of them, in a very polite and friendly manner, was happy to fill me in, in the foreign language of English, too. They said that there was a fault affecting three substations in our area and that they were sending three mobile generators out from Nicosia and they were going to instal one at each of the faulty substations and then our power would be back on. They then said when I woke up in the morning, the diesel generators would have gone and everything would be back to normal. And so it was. They worked through the night on a public holiday to rectify the fault. I do not believe that you would get this kind of service from one of the privatised electricity companies in the UK - not on Boxing Day.
In fact, until the Mari explosion, I had never experienced an unscheduled power cut in Cyprus, and even if they were going to make a scheduled power cut to do some work, they used to send out a postcard informing you of the time of the outage at least a week in advance. The one thing that I need to run my microbusiness is a reliable electricity supply, and I believe that a state monopoly is in a better position to do so. There is nothing wrong with the mixed economy model in my book. To say that all state run enterprises are bad and all private enterprises are good is a gross simplification.
Let us not hear the red herring about the most expensive electricity in Europe, either. That has to do with the lack of economies of scale on this small island.

Usually, when things like electricity is privatized, they also privatize the grid.

The grid will go to private hands and they will be responsible for maintaining the network. They derive an income from charging electricity retailers and power stations a few cents per kW in transmission costs.

There will be 2 different types of electricity companies. Some will be mere retailers, whilst others will generate and retail as well.

The grid company will have its own service personnel and from my experience they are very efficient and prompt in dealing with issues because if their grid goes down, they lose money. Always remember very prompt responses on weekends but I can't recall if there was an instance on a major public holiday. Power outages were very rare. You probably get 3 to 4 per year and that is mainly during a heat wave.

I don't know about Australia, but in the UK there is one private company called Centrica which has the monopoly over the grid and then there is an illusion that various other private companies are in competition with one another, but this would only be true if they each had their own grids, which they don't. As Centrica has the monopoly over the grid, consumers cannot go anywhere else, so it is no great skin off Centrica's nose if there is an outage, especially in a small area because they just have certain percentage targets that they are meant to meet. Sorry, but I don't believe that they would have given that kind of service on a bank holiday.

Australia is a bit different. Each State has it's own grid but the Grid is interconnected. As far as I am aware, I think every State has privatized their grid.

The grid only charges generators and retailers transmission costs. It's a small minute figure of about 1 to 3 cents per kW. All generators and retailers pay the same figure.

Then you have the Generators and retailers which sell you the electricity. The competition comes from these companies vying for market share. Retailers are generally suppose to be dearer but so many times they also tend to undercut the big boys to grab their share of the market.

[Paphitis]

As for outages, they tend to be very short! Generally, less than an hour.

However, We once had an outage of 6 hours.

I think there are rules as to how long an outage can be and if they exceed this, the electricity company is liable for compensating households with losses of perishable goods in your fridge.

I think it is as simple of telling them the value of your lost goods, provide a receipt and they credit your account.

[Tim Drayton]

As for outages, they tend to be very short! Generally, less than an hour.

However, We once had an outage of 6 hours.

I think there are rules as to how long an outage can be and if they exceed this, the electricity company is liable for compensating households with losses of perishable goods in your fridge.

In Cyprus, prior to the Mari explosion, outages didn't happen, ever - unless they were scheduled, and then you got about a week's advance notice (in a postcard delivered by hand to every house affected), giving the exact time the power would go off and the expected time it would come back on, and it always came back on earlier! That was my experience of seven years pre-Mari of the state electricity board in Cyprus.

We can obviously go around all night swapping points on this, but I feel that the free market is a great mechanism that works well in many sectors where you can have genuine competition, but ultimately the market should be the servant and not the master. It is not an altar on which everything has to be sacrificed. The electricity grid is part of the country's basic infrastructure and is too important to give a private company monopoly control over, and the only way that you can have genuine competition is for multiple grids to be built, which would be a waste of resources. I do not accept that all state-run enterprises are necessarily bad. I have travelled on the state-run French and German railways, for example, and have found them to be excellent, and they also take less state subsidy than the now privatised railway companies in the UK.