Farmers 'can't be penalised' for electricity use
"Farmers can't be penalised for using their electricity at certain times of the day, food still needs to be produced."
Farmers are concerned they are going to be “penalised for having the milking parlour going at certain times of the day”.
The Irish Farmers’ Association has said that farmers cannot be penalised by any peak electricity charges proposed by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU).
The CRU has proposed that peak pricing will be implemented across a number of small and large-scale consumer segments, resulting in a 10% increase in network charges during the peak period of 5pm-7pm.
According to the CRU, this 10% increase during peak periods is offset by a corresponding decrease during off-peak periods. “This is designed to act as an incentive to suppliers to promote appropriate off-peak products and services to customers.”
The IFA has said it is looking for “a level of common sense on this”.
“Being penalised for using electricity at a time when cows are traditionally being milked, that’s a problem for us,” IFA environment and rural affairs chairman Paul O’Brien told the .
“Agriculture is not an industry that can just turn the tap on and turn the tap off, animals are in a routine.
“Cows will need to be milked at a certain time, they’re traditionally milked at that time, they need to be kept milking around that time and I think we’re going to be penalised as a result, and that’s unfair.
“Farmers can't be penalised for using their electricity at certain times of the day, food still needs to be produced.”
IFA dairy chairman Stephen Arthur said that these higher electricity costs “would drive the cost of food production even higher at a time when farmers are already grappling with cost increases of over 40% in the past year”.
“Farmers are not able to bear any further cost increases,” Mr Arthur added.
Mr O'Brien added that this has brought to light the need to increase the focus on micro-generation. “We need to make sure that the barriers at farm level are all taken down,” Mr O'Brien said.
A spokesperson for the CRU said that the peak time of use tariff “is not applied to all customers and depends on what distribution or transmission group that a customer falls into”.
“The peak time of use tariffs are primarily being applied to large and extra-large energy users [manufacturing, data centres] and to suppliers who have domestic smart meter customers,” the spokesperson said.
“There are a number of factors that may affect that such as the tariff that they have with their supplier [generally all time of use tariffs are structured/weighted to shifting customer usage away for peak periods], the customer's usage patterns, and if the supplier chooses to pass on the network charge," they added.
