This is getting ridiculous (energy prices - Strictly NO referrals!)

[ci_newman]

Mine stopped working at the beginning of March, weirdly the same time a lot of people's did if you search online.
Octopus don't seem to give a hoot so assist from this month's readings I can't be arsed sending any more, it's a right hassle to get to the meters.

My smart meter can still be read for billing purposes but I stopped getting daily readings / energy use statistics from BG on 16th Feb. I know the smart meter still works though because I've integrated it with Samsung Smart Things so I can see my daily usage through that.

 

[mid_gen]

Yeah, they also have to be competitive with pricing, that's why a lot of them went out of business this year, it wouldn't suggest they're fleecing the public if they're not earning enough money to survive

You do know that they went bust precisely because they don't operate in a free market and are not able to compete.

All psuedo privatisation of essential services does is make sure profits are siphoned off to private shareholders, and losses are picked up by the taxpayer.

Do you think this is a better system than the one in France?

 

[Blackjack Davy]

Can't even login into energy website at the moment everyone's trying to submit their final meter reading before the price rises at midnight will have to try later

They also sign up to carbon neutral agreements and pretend this is all achievable whilst sitting on hands for years.

They could have invested in Tiday systems which is abundant around the coasts and explored other options amongst nuclear - which I agree they again sat on hands about more than a decade ago. We also have plenty of nuclear military vehicles and technology and like the covid panic could easily accelerate a solution.

Never mind that we've 40% of europe's potential wind energy but how much of it do we actually harvest? Bugger all its not look-at-me-I'm-important! like nuclear power so politicians aren't incentivised (its also enormously cheaper once you tie in all the costs of nuclear including decommisioning which is collosal)

 

[robj20]

My smart meter can still be read for billing purposes but I stopped getting daily readings / energy use statistics from BG on 16th Feb. I know the smart meter still works though because I've integrated it with Samsung Smart Things so I can see my daily usage through that.

Neither the WAN or HAN is working on mine. Really annoying after being pestered for years to have one, now it's no different than what I had.

 

[GreatAuk]

I've got a first gen smart meter (previous owners got it fitted) so still have to submit readings manually. Recently it seems to have connected to my energy supplier systems because I can see daily usage charts online, doesn't show actual readings though, and company still asks for readings sometimes so presume it's not fully functional.

The main difference between my old dumb meter and the smart meter is that taking a reading is much harder because you have to press the number '9' on the keypad for some reason and then only have a few seconds to snap a picture or write the number down before it starts scrolling through other stats that mean god knows what.

I feel fully justified in being a sceptic in the past and refusing to let previous electricity companies fit one where I used to live. Shocking how much the smart meter scheme cost, and all the sort of minute to minute pricing and smart car charging etc that was used to promote the scheme seems a long way off, particularly for 1st gen meters where companies can't even get a simple meter reading off them!

 

[Nemiyen]

You're speaking with 20/20 hindsight though, 10 years ago we were still struggling to get the economy running again after the financial crash, no one predicted Russia would go to war with Ukraine and suddenly we'd want to reduce reliance on them, we probably hoped 10 years ago we would have a better relationship with Russia not worse. What's the point of us being carbon neutral if we're just shifting the problem else where? And you think nationalising companies makes them less greedy? Private companies are accountable to the free market, nationalisation means we have no choice what we pay. Also not sure if you're aware but the general public sees the word nuclear and runs 50 miles in the other direction, no one wants a nuclear power station in the same county as them, that's the problem.

Nobody Western has ever had a good relationship with the Russians so if countries wanted to rely on them for anything expecting things to get better it would be daft. I'm the sort of person that builds 2 or 3 rides for redundancy in theme park or has multiple electrolysis machines in theme hospital so if I could we would have had 75 percent of our power from nuclear! (The rest being solar or wind etc) No way would I want to rely on another country for critical things like food or energy.

It should be that if energy and water was nationalised then it is run at cost only and the cheapest possible price is set for the people. It would be audited by independent people to make sure some fat cat isn't skimming from the top.

On another note if it's political suicide for France now then why isn't it for the Conservatives now when the next election comes?

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Some people seem very confused as to what a state owned utility company could or couldn't do
Firstly it would depend on whether a the utility itself or rather the source was domestic or imported.

If imported then the cost would still move with the free market, and not reflecting that with prices consumers paid would just mean it was added to general taxation or debt.
If domestically produced then it could be in effect supplied at cost, ie the extraction / processing cost and eliminate all the profit that the companies doing the extraction part make.

 

[XeNoNF50]

Some people seem very confused as to what a state owned utility company could or couldn't do
Firstly it would depend on whether a the utility itself or rather the source was domestic or imported.

If imported then the cost would still move with the free market, and not reflecting that with prices consumers paid would just mean it was added to general taxation or debt.
If domestically produced then it could be in effect supplied at cost, ie the extraction / processing cost and eliminate all the profit that the companies doing the extraction part make.

So with our energy mix and where we get it from, what % could be supplied at cost and what % would move with the free market?

 

[mid_gen]

Some people seem very confused as to what a state owned utility company could or couldn't do
Firstly it would depend on whether a the utility itself or rather the source was domestic or imported.

If imported then the cost would still move with the free market, and not reflecting that with prices consumers paid would just mean it was added to general taxation or debt.
If domestically produced then it could be in effect supplied at cost, ie the extraction / processing cost and eliminate all the profit that the companies doing the extraction part make.

If you produce enough domestically, you also have the option to subsidise your own energy by exporting to your short-sighted dysfunctional neighbours at a premium.

 

[SDK^]

If the energy companies are private, their priority is to generate profit to shareholders.

Negative !!
Targets set by Ofgem need to be met first to release most profits. Achieving these targets are a priority , which put the customer and energy supply first.

Half the problem with this country is everyone has an ‘opinion’ which they think is fact, yet they don’t understand how the industry works.

 

[LabR@t]

I feel sorry for Mary

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/mary-q...eady-paying-up-to-50-a-day-in-electricity?amp

 

[Mickie]

£50 a day for heating, shame they couldnt heat a tank at night at 5p a KW and used it to heat the building through the day.

 

[Nemiyen]

Negative !!
Targets set by Ofgem need to be met first to release most profits. Achieving these targets are a priority , which put the customer and energy supply first.

Half the problem with this country is everyone has an ‘opinion’ which they think is fact, yet they don’t understand how the industry works.

And I'm sure those targets are hit pretty damn quick and then the profits roll in!

https://newstextarea.com/eon-doubles-profit-and-confirms-forecast/

I definitely DO NOT know how it all works and I live in my own bubble but I'm sure things could be done much better than they are now.

 

[AORUS]

That explains why E.on kept declining my house. Then I found out it was mainly to do with being in Scotland. Granted it gets a lot of sun from the south but according to them there isn't enough sunlight. Which isn't true. The rear of the house gets absolutely scorched most of the year. I'm always having to repair the concrete around the windows from the sun cracking it all over time as they get so hot.

Unless E.on don't want you going on Solar? Here is a better guild on solar panels and how many you need
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/how-many-solar-panels-do-i-need

 

[alec]

what a state owned utility company could or couldn't do
Firstly it would depend on whether a the utility itself or rather the source was domestic or imported.

If imported then the cost would still move with the free market

Completely depends on how it is set up.
If domestic supplied 75% of our energy needs, then increased cost of "free market" energy only affects 25% of your bill. So if market price doubles, your cost to consumer only increases by a quarter.

But right now our energy bills follow the market entirely and instead "domestic" energy companies reap record profits. Their costs didn't increase one bit, but they get higher price per unit.

 

[GreatAuk]

I feel sorry for Mary

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/mary-q...eady-paying-up-to-50-a-day-in-electricity?amp

Oof, that is bad, and got no control over the fact the council went with some stupid electric boiler system in 2010 based on a 5p/kWh 'economy 2000' electricity rate being available at the time, and haven't changed it... Been a long running campaign by the affected residents it seems, eg: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...ost-5K-year-green-energy-deal-gone-wrong.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.falkirkherald.co.uk/news/falkirk-villagers-turn-heat-scottishpower-says-it-will-investigate-high-bills-1326929?amp

Still, story doesn't quite add up. Over £800/month bills. Let's say that means £850/month. That's £28/day. Bit less than the 'anything from £30 to £50 a day'. However, the rest of the numbers probably do check out, being as generous as possible on the cost side:

Can estimate usage with the current 21p/kwh cap (which applies to prepayment meters which they probably have as well as normal ones, and let's assume pessimistically that the energy company has been a ******* and put the off peak rate for their tariff (their tariff has a night time rate) up to 21p as well as the peak rate). Take off say £7 for standing charges, that means the household is using 21/0.21= 100kwh/day. Could take off 20kwh for cooking on an electric stove & oven and general use, leaving 80kwh/day. Let's say the boiler is equivalent to one of the larger ones in the current Thermaflow lineup (https://thermaflowheating.co.uk/product/th12-330u-m3-electric-boiler/) , which takes 12kW, just under 2 hrs to fully heat up and gives 400l of hot water. 80/12 = 6.7 hours/day. Let's say that means one full tank of hot water / day leaves 4.7 hours for heating use per day on average. Must have the heating on all day on the £50 days though.

In most of the news stories the council has mentioned installing extra insulation etc, but I imagine the houses still aren't very well insulated, so an hour of heating in the morning and a few hours in the evening might well be required to keep the house warm in those periods.

Still, with some neighbours apparently paying a fair bit less can't help thinking the subject of the news story could save a fair bit of money by turning the heating down... Overall still a really bad situation the council has put some vulnerable tenants in though.

 

[mid_gen]

Negative !!
Targets set by Ofgem need to be met first to release most profits. Achieving these targets are a priority , which put the customer and energy supply first.

That they have some hoops to jump through in order to achieve that does not change the fact that the primary purpose of a private energy company is to generate profit.

This sort of thinking is I guess why we have this absolute dumpster fire of half-cocked privatisation mess in this country.

You have to wonder how many more times the taxpayer has to step in to bail out these failed privatisation efforts before people get over this naivety.

 

[SDK^]

https://newstextarea.com/eon-doubles-profit-and-confirms-forecast/

I definitely DO NOT know how it all works and I live in my own bubble but I'm sure things could be done much better than they are now.

I’m not saying energy companies don’t make (big) profits but you need to look at where those profits come from.
E.on does at lot more than just supply electricity, which the profit is about 5%.

 

[varkanoid]

Fixed last July when I bought my new house, fixed until July 2023, cheers all

*laughs in cheap leccy*

Yeah I got my 2024 fixed deal last August my previous one was up in Sept anyway. The lottery outcome will be what the prices are like Sept 2024. My inlaws used to be on standard tariff for years and years because they dont know how to change it after years of badgering they finally did the other year now they are thankful too.

With the solar panels on the roof for the electric it not as bad as the doom monger media are making out.

 

[Surveyor]

Yeah I got my 2024 fixed deal last August my previous one was up in Sept anyway. The lottery outcome will be what the prices are like Sept 2024. My inlaws used to be on standard tariff for years and years because they dont know how to change it after years of badgering they finally did the other year now they are thankful too.

With the solar panels on the roof for the electric it not as bad as the doom monger media are making out.

Such empathy The vast majority aren't on a fixed tariff and/or don't have solar panels.