Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

[Priapus]

So having just moved to the UK and now into our first home. Joined Octopus and got the gas and electric switched over to them. Considering switching to the Tracker tariff, but some say in Winter it's not that much different?

Is there a penalty for switching too?

They've estimated our usage to be £186 a month (5 bed detached house) but at the current rate we are using power, I just don't see how it will be anywhere near that. Gas is like £1 a day give or take. As our gas boiler only turns on when there is a tap opened, no water tank to heat up.

Currently, the app says total charge this month is like £25 - clearly I am missing something? Where's the other £161 going to come from?

I'm told it's good to have credit for the winter. Fortunately we won't need to heat all 5 bedrooms, due to there only being two adults and a small child in the house. So will turn off radiators in the spare / empty rooms.

 

[pastymuncher]

I saved several hundred pounds last winter on the tracker because it was much cheaper than the standard rates. Things have changed now though because gas has jumped quite significantly and is getting very close to the standard rate. For me today it's 4.61p per kWh (highest it's been so far) when back in the winter it was as low as 2.86p per kWh at some points.

There is no penalty for going onto or coming off the tracker and Octopus may not have any penalty charges at all unless there are any on fixed rates.

The high monthly charge is to build up credit for the winter. After refunding my credit back in December I am back to £760 credit yet again and it was even building over winter despite having the heating on. I will be getting a refund again soon as it's better off in my bank than theirs.

I wouldn't turn the radiators off completely in the unused rooms, just have them on low instead, say number 1 on the dial.

 

[chrcoluk]

Greg who is CEO of Octopus says we should have proper regional pricing and not basically* a national price.

I found something interesting though, onshore wind is connected to the local grid and goes no where near the national.

I think my view is more aligned to Richie in general that to me it makes little sense to have different methodologies in how we price different parts of the national electricity network.
It would certainly be fairer by my mind to either properly chop it up or properly standardise the costs to all.

Not a fan of Regional pricing personally, so will disagree with Greg on that one. The main issue is people will be in affect victims or winners of a postcode lottery they have very little control over. (unless you think its reasonable to up sticks to get cheaper energy)

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I saved several hundred pounds last winter on the tracker because it was much cheaper than the standard rates. Things have changed now though because gas has jumped quite significantly and is getting very close to the standard rate. For me today it's 4.61p per kWh (highest it's been so far) when back in the winter it was as low as 2.86p per kWh at some points.

There is no penalty for going onto or coming off the tracker and Octopus may not have any penalty charges at all unless there are any on fixed rates.

The high monthly charge is to build up credit for the winter. After refunding my credit back in December I am back to £760 credit yet again and it was even building over winter despite having the heating on. I will be getting a refund again soon as it's better off in my bank than theirs.

I wouldn't turn the radiators off completely in the unused rooms, just have them on low instead, say number 1 on the dial.

There is iirc a 9 month lock out period for tracker, so you cannot return to it for 9 months.

Not a fan of Regional pricing personally, so will disagree with Greg on that one. The main issue is people will be in affect victims or winners of a postcode lottery they have very little control over. (unless you think its reasonable to up sticks to get cheaper energy)

Its already a postcode lottery as the amount of SC in some parts of the UK compared to others show you.

Just about everything you buy is different prices depending on where you live. Petrol & water for example as two similar items to electricity.

I'm not fussed either way, but do believe that either the SC or the unit cost pricing mechanism should be adjusted to match the other.
Oh, and some absolute clarity and transparency on how the SC is being calculated.

The main reason I am for regional pricing is that it should increase the (or reduce the NIMBY) amount of people willing to have renewables near to them.
More renewables in your region, lower bills.

 

[Richie]

Not a fan of Regional pricing personally, so will disagree with Greg on that one. The main issue is people will be in affect victims or winners of a postcode lottery they have very little control over. (unless you think its reasonable to up sticks to get cheaper energy)

As MKW says above, its already like this for SC and can vary by as much as 30p/day for Elec just because you live in a different part of the country. Gas is pretty much identical UK wide... That's £110/year because of where you live so, for the people that are against regional unit pricing and in that spirit of fairness, lets make the SC equal as well

 

[200sols]

Well mains gas isn't as widespread as electricity, the main reason the SC is so different is the cost of supplying rural properties so it is going to be a postcode lottery by design.

 

[Richie]

the main reason the SC is so different is the cost of supplying rural properties so it is going to be a postcode lottery by design.

It doesn't have to be, that's the point. Charges for the provision of what I would call life's necessities (water, elec, gas etc) should be equal throughout the country where that charge is not determined by an individual's usage.

 

[200sols]

It doesn't have to be, that's the point. Charges for the provision of what I would call life's necessities (water, elec, gas etc) should be equal throughout the country where that charge is not determined by an individual's usage.

It doesn't have to be no, it's just amusing how in favour you are of subsidising things when it would work in your favour.

 

[Richie]

It doesn't have to be no, it's just amusing how in favour you are of subsidising things when it would work in your favour.

I would be in favour if it wasn't to my favour so your inference that it is for selfish reasons is unwelcome.... I like fairness in life regardless if it affects me positively or negatively and that's how a society should strive to be in areas like this, however naive that sounds.

There have been many times I could have asked if you are against it because it may affect you positively or negatively but I don't, because that's not my position (see above)

 

[200sols]

I would be in favour if it wasn't to my favour so your inference that it is for selfish reasons is unwelcome.... I like fairness in life regardless if it affects me positively or negatively and that's how a society should strive to be in areas like this, however naive that sounds.

There have been many times I could have asked if you are against it because it may affect you positively or negatively but I don't, because that's not my position (see above)

Its not naive but the single costs idea doesnt seem all that fair. Basically London and the South East would be subsidising rural Scotland and a few other rural areas more than they already do. The supply network simply costs more in rural areas, why would it be fair to expect city folk to pay for that?

The biggest change that would benefit Scotland is if energy price wasn't tied to gas, the SC is fair enough in my eyes.

Just to add, that doesn't mean I'm happy with how high the SC is now without any explanation why its outstripped inflation so much but that's another issue that it seems we won't be getting an answer to.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Its not naive but the single costs idea doesnt seem all that fair. Basically London and the South East would be subsidising rural Scotland and a few other rural areas more than they already do. The supply network simply costs more in rural areas, why would it be fair to expect city folk to pay for that?

The biggest change that would benefit Scotland is if energy price wasn't tied to gas, the SC is fair enough in my eyes.

Just to add, that doesn't mean I'm happy with how high the SC is now without any explanation why its outstripped inflation so much but that's another issue that it seems we won't be getting an answer to.

But your ignoring the other side of the coin.
The high generation areas don't need a national grid to supply their locally produced energy to the local consumers.

Lets go back to the coal mines, when the power stations were all, or mainly located near to the mines, for obvious reasons. Where would the energy to supply L&SE come from without the NG to distribute it?
What benefit was the Ng to those living in the midlands with the supply and the generation. Basically zero.

Take Scotland now. Say they went Indy. If they were paying anything towards a national grid it would be so they could export energy to the RoUK at commercial rates.
You would be paying more on your unit rates than you do now.

Take my region. A nuclear power station, loads off offshore, lots of solar. Times when they literally cannot export out of the region as the NG is maxed out.
So they are building more NG infrastructure out of the region. That we all pay for.

If each region could sell its local generation to neighbouring regions at a commercial rate then those producing lots would see better pricing and those consuming lots would see higher pricing. In theory, of course privatisation mixes that up a bit,

Right now the "local" distribution costs are socialised into "regions" but the national production costs are socialised across the whole of the UK. Thats the imbalance.
We know they have looked at fixing that imbalance by reviewing a standard SC nationally.
I suspect if you were setting this up now you would have a very different picture to how its ended up semi fragmented but with the UK wide pricing still in place from when it was nationalised.

My suspicion in regards SC is that the companies didn't bother adding everything they could into the SC when there was enough margin and basically the price wasn't being set by the regulator.
The moment that changed they stuck everything they could legally into the SC.
I mean part of the deals were you would often see higher or lower SCs and varying unit prices. Now when you do a comparison the SC is basically always maxed out.

 

[jpaul]

scotland sharing it's 2GW/power https://www.ssen-transmission.co.uk...k-2-receives-provisional-regulatory-approval/
it's bidirectional too - as bbc said - lol

Spoiler: big map

Ofgem has approved a £3.4 billion ($4.4 billion) funding package to build a proposed new subsea and underground 500km cable between Scotland and Yorkshire in the UK.

Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL 2) will deliver a 2GW high voltage electricity ‘superhighway’ cable link between Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and Drax in North Yorkshire, which will help harness the potential of British offshore wind power.

The project is being jointly developed by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks Transmission (SSENT) and National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) with construction planned to start in 2024 and the new connection due to be operational by 2029.

Most of the cable (around 436km) will be under the North Sea with the remaining 70km buried underground onshore.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

That will annoy those in the east of England.

 

[Richie]

Basically London and the South East would be subsidising rural Scotland and a few other rural areas more than they already do. The supply network simply costs more in rural areas,

Could it not be argued that rural Scotland (where a lot of London and SE electricity comes from) is "subsidising" those areas for failing to build local power generation?

I use the word "subsidising" as I don't necessarily mean cost in pounds and pennies but the lack of provision of electricity generation in those areas has meant that Scotland is covering its own areas in renewables in order to "subsidise" the NIMBYs and, possibly, crap WM government all the while the NIMBYs get cheaper SC and the areas providing it are paying far higher rates.

MKW says it a little better.

why would it be fair to expect city folk to pay for that?

On the flip side - Why is it fair for said city folk to push all the renewables and power generation to rural areas to appease the city-folks NIMBY-ism?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

On the flip side - Why is it fair for said city folk to push all the renewables and power generation to rural areas to appease the city-folks NIMBY-ism?

No one is proposing to build a 10GW wind farm or frankly any other kind of grid scale power generation project in a city for obvious reasons...

 

[Richie]

No one is proposing to build a 10GW wind farm or frankly any other kind of grid scale power generation project in a city for obvious reasons...

Of course I didnt mean in the middle of a city, that's just daft.

A 10 second google found a possible area just outside London for Nuclear or renewable (wind/solar) - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4766372,0.5041396,6353m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu. This is just an example BTW (I was considering the Thames as cooling water for Nuclear at that site)


Example of Nimby-ism, a mere 100km from central London - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-67773752. I know it was ruled lawful but my point is it went all the way to the Court of Appeal because of NIMBY-ism. They want to protect their own countryside but happy to take all the energy from elsewhere in the country whilst paying 20% less in elec SC than Scotland and 30% less than Northern England. That doesnt just feel wrong?

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Of course I didnt mean in the middle of a city, that's just daft.

A 10 second google found a possible area just outside London for Nuclear or renewable (wind/solar) - https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4766372,0.5041396,6353m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu. This is just an example BTW (I was considering the Thames as cooling water for Nuclear at that site)


Example of Nimby-ism, a mere 100km from central London - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-67773752. I know it was ruled lawful but my point is it went all the way to the Court of Appeal because of NIMBY-ism. They want to protect their own countryside but happy to take all the energy from elsewhere in the country whilst paying 20% less in elec SC than Scotland and 30% less than Northern England. That doesnt just feel wrong?

Sizewell isn't in same area as London and SE. We are Eastern region.

Its on the same site as existing B reactor.
Main issues locally are construction traffic mainly. many still remember B being built.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

That example land is marsh land, it’s basically a muggy bog and highly vulnerable to flooding. Not exactly prime real estate fora nuclear power station.

 

[200sols]

The high generation areas don't need a national grid to supply their locally produced energy to the local consumers.

And they pay less towards it as a consequence.

Take Scotland now. Say they went Indy. If they were paying anything towards a national grid it would be so they could export energy to the RoUK at commercial rates.
You would be paying more on your unit rates than you do now.

Not necessarily. Commercial rates are often very low when renewables are at their highest output. Landowners in Scotland are paid a percentage of the wind farm profits or a fixed rent for their land, its not unsubstantial, the 'locals' would benefit more from seeing a share of this plus owning their own turbines rather than foreign governments and investors owning a lot of it.

Lets go back to the coal mines, when the power stations were all, or mainly located near to the mines, for obvious reasons. Where would the energy to supply L&SE come from without the NG to distribute it?
What benefit was the Ng to those living in the midlands with the supply and the generation. Basically zero.

Its a bit different because it was publicly owned, nobody had a choice. Now wind farms need the national grid to sell their energy as in most of these areas there isnt enough demand on the local grid and the turbines would have to the turned off more often.

Right now the "local" distribution costs are socialised into "regions" but the national production costs are socialised across the whole of the UK. Thats the imbalance.

Already been discussed though, the regions using more 'grid' are paying more for it.

 

[200sols]

Could it not be argued that rural Scotland (where a lot of London and SE electricity comes from) is "subsidising" those areas for failing to build local power generation?

I use the word "subsidising" as I don't necessarily mean cost in pounds and pennies but the lack of provision of electricity generation in those areas has meant that Scotland is covering its own areas in renewables in order to "subsidise" the NIMBYs and, possibly, crap WM government all the while the NIMBYs get cheaper SC and the areas providing it are paying far higher rates.

MKW says it a little better.

Plenty of solar farms in England now, it is changing with regards to nimbyism. But some of the old abandoned projects should be looked at again, plenty of space for more offshore wind down this way.