Energy Prices (Strictly NO referrals!)

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Yea, I can't drink coffee and I don't really like Tea, so occasionally I will have a hot chocolate that I could just make in the microwave or on a hob for less than 3kw peak.

most your energy usage seems to be heating pump & electric shower.

not regular normal electricity usage for plebs

I'm ganing on a 12700k + a 4090 + oled monitor that says it can pull 190watts max.
speakers that both have built in amps, idk what they pull but they are only 100watt speakers.
A few hue lights.

router, usb dac

I probably pull 1kw if I have the screen full white, benchmark the gpu/cpu at the same time and blast music at 100% volume

I'm sure I understand energy fine... obviously I meant 750 watt hours


There's almost 0 circumstances where a 1-2 occupancy will pull more than 13amps, and even if they were like not boiling a kettle whilst taking an electric shower I'm sure they'd work around it very easily



Central heat pumps are 5-100watts according to google, and most people don't have electric showers or a fancy heating system

Honestly you sound like a hermit.

There are plenty of devices that spike to around 3kw on their own, even if its for short periods.

Dishwasher, when water heating parts of cycle
Kettle
Washing machine when doing water heating
Tumble drier
My oven will use up to 1.8kw per cavity, it has 4x cavities that can be heated.

The point was, unlike you, there are plenty of single people who will use more than one appliance at a time and may have a low overall usage, but heavy spikes when doing normal stuff.

When I lived alone, I would often get in from work, switch on the over and kettle to make a brew, turn on the TV or stereo, a few lights as I changed from work to casual clothes.
I would typically do my washing at weekends but it wasn't impossible I would do a load, especially if I had had a busy weekend and was behind on that chore.

And yet I had pretty low usage as I was actually at home probably a low amount of time, I was always going out messing about with cars and stuff with my mates, or at work, or at home and sleeping.
I still probably spiked into 6kw or so range at times.

My house batteries can output 5.5kw at a time, more than that and I pull grid usage.
If I look at my actual usage I can often see small micro spikes when things align that use electricity and I go over 5.5kw.
But its often for really small amounts of time. So I tend to have usage of less than 50w in those half hour slots, thats from the grid.

I guess if your not capable of multitasking at all and do everything one thing at a time then you might just about be able to never exceed 13amps.
Especially if you haven't got half the modern appliances, (oven, dishwasher etc).

My pump is rated at 90w but it always causes a spike of more like 200w, so not sure why that is, but that is what it is.

Do you have a fridge and freezer? Depending on models they can pull 1kw or so when they kick in as well.
Most will be fused to 13amp so will be capable of pulling more than 1kw on load.

Plenty of people I know in flats have electric heating as well, and electric showers in that scenario are almost a given as well, or a hot water tank with an immersion in it.
Actually thats point, how do you heat your water?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

yea because you clearly don't live there, in which case I'd consider a standing charge fair.

cos your just standing and not using

Not sure what mean, I can confirm I live here. According to my battery portal I’ve used 6,469kwh between 11/1 and today.

I had gas heating for the first 4 months of the year so that would need adding on. I’m probably looking at 8000-9000kwh used per year.

My bill is still going to be under £200 and the standing charge is still £180 of that.

My solar is showering half the street in the summer .

Edit: I’ve exported 5631kwh between 11/1 and today.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Well my yearly bill will be negative and I have a tumble drier and a dishwasher.

Thing is we are all cheating, we all have solar and batteries and benefit from things like powerups.

My electric bill for the months April to September was more than 100% SC, because I had energy credits exceeding my grid usage for every month, (like you and b2sk8 would be)

I think the problem is that arknor is far from normal is this regard, but then so are we to some extent.
We are probably the worst sorts for knowing our usage and data as we care because of the solar.

I may be wrong but I have half a feeling he was the one who said in one of the threads he only washes his bed sheets once every 6 months as he sleeps in his clothes so they don't get dirty.
Don't quote me on that as I may have the wrong person but there are people like that about, who are really really outliers on stuff.

 

[arknor]

I think the problem is that arknor is far from normal is this regard, but then so are we to some extent.
We are probably the worst sorts for knowing our usage and data as we care because of the solar.

you still think I don;t know how much electric im using...

dood I can clearly see the KWH used number on my bill.
I have UPS for the PC so I know exactly how much my entertainment pulls.


you lot just assume people have luxury items as the norm.

as said earlier less than 50% have an electric shower in the UK
49.5% have a dishwasher.
53% have a tumble drier.

these items aren't as common as you think, nor are solar panels on the roof, aircon and ground pumps

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

you still think I don;t know how much electric im using...

dood I can clearly see the KWH used number on my bill.
I have UPS for the PC so I know exactly how much my entertainment pulls.


you lot just assume people have luxury items as the norm.

as said earlier less than 50% have an electric shower in the UK
49.5% have a dishwasher.
53% have a tumble drier.

these items aren't as common as you think, nor are solar panels on the roof

Electric showers, I very much don't see them as a luxury, the opposite in effect. Typically they are installed where there is no gas for a combi/system/vented type water heater.
Occasionally in places where the quote for adding hot water was bonkers, converted outbuildings etc.

You can see the KWH used on your bill, I have loads of detailed data. I can see my KWH on my bill as well, it tells me absolutely nothing in regards spikes in usage, which was my original point.

Honestly its 2024, dishwashers and tumble driers are not luxury items, nor are ovens, or washing machines.
Most of the people I know who don't have tumbles or dishwashers them want them, but simply don't have the space for them.

 

[danlightbulb]

Sure everyone benefits from energy infrastructure, but not equally. Again its socialism which until recently was a very very bad word in the UK when you consider the last 4-5 decades.

I would argue that this is no different from most public services. We all don't have the same utilisation from all public services yet the costs of these are generally proportionally spread.

I agree that there is a direct link from having energy and making profit for example, eg in a firm making some product. Whereas there isn't a direct link between availability of healthcare and making profits (obviously a significant indirect one). But to me that would be a further argument for weighting more towards the variable charge and away from the standing charge, because if the network costs are spread equally by household then we have cross subsidy going on from low users just surviving to far higher uses who might be making profits from energy use.

I mean I thought you were a proponent of smaller government, now you want to let them spend more money.

Im a proponent of efficiency for sure, and I do think there is a lot of waste in public services. But Im also a proponent of fairness and I do genuinely think that the cost impact of upgrade of national energy infrastructure should be spread proportional to income and the best way to achieve that is to make it come out of general taxation. In this scenario, the government is only acting as a middleman - collecting the revenue via tax proportionally across the population and passing it on to infrastructure provider. It doesn't change anything about what or how its spent.

That's why I said earlier that it how the costs are recovered is just a choice. We could have fixed costs of 1 and variable costs of 2 for a total of 3. But if we wanted, we could collect all of those 3 units of cost via variable rate, via standing charge, somewhere in the middle, from all taxpayers not just energy users, or even just from Richard Branson if we could make him pay for it. Its simply political choice as to how the costs of infrastructure are recovered.

As someone who does this kind of thing I would say I have found it incredibly difficult to find any relevant information (despite looking on Ofgem etc) that would allow me to make a decision on whether SC included stuff that should be included within unit costs.

It is difficult I agree. The best source I found was a couple years back when Ofgem consulted on the standing charge and within that there was some information on what had been added. The bulk of the increase since 2022 was from DUOS and TNUOS cost increases which were elected to be added to the standing charge.

From google:
* DUoS charges are a revenue source for DNOs to build, operate, maintain, repair, and invest in the electricity network.
* Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) charges recover the cost of installing and maintaining the transmission network in England, Wales, Scotland and offshore.

So these certainly appear to me to be significant elements of national infrastructure and the backbone of the grid system that we all benefit from.

Food is expensive, can we move some of that to general taxation. GPUs also, way too expensive, We need to socialise the cost of them.
Once you start socialising where do you stop. I dunno, I just find it a problem that people rush to shout "general taxation" when they need to pay for something.

I take your point and I recognise that at the extreme then issues like this may present. We're nowhere near that though, no-one is suggesting that people shouldn't pay for what they use or should fully subsidise everyone else's costs. The costs we're talking about are things that are really part of national infrastructure improvements, in much the same way as hospitals or roads are. They benefit everyone no matter how much energy you use personally and they are essential fabric of our country's economic output. I feel its very regressive to take a cost like this and spread it evenly over every household regardless of income.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I would argue that this is no different from most public services. We all don't have the same utilisation from all public services yet the costs of these are generally proportionally spread.

I agree that there is a direct link from having energy and making profit for example, eg in a firm making some product. Whereas there isn't a direct link between availability of healthcare and making profits (obviously a significant indirect one). But to me that would be a further argument for weighting more towards the variable charge and away from the standing charge, because if the network costs are spread equally by household then we have cross subsidy going on from low users just surviving to far higher uses who might be making profits from energy use.

So do you consider electric and gas grid connections as public services? I don't personally.
Eg we charge people asking for grid connections in difficult places a lot of money, they have no right to them.
So would you be adding the costs of all that to our general taxation?
There are plenty of people in the off grid community that I have followed at times that are off grid purely because the costs quoted to them are mind boggling. I mean well into 5 figures.
If you saying they are public services and should be within general taxation your going to have to connect literally anyone, anywhere for free no?

I don't massively disagree with socialising grid etc, but its very much a hot potato historically.
When all the stuff like BG, NG, BT etc were national it was fairly heavily pushed that they were unaccountable, not cost efficient, and potentially doing stuff we didn't need whilst not doing stuff that we want them to do.
Eg there was an argument we would have seen far faster fibre etc had BT not basically been able to "not bother"

My other major issue on top of the money aspect is that if we passed the responsibility for the cost and in effect the do we or don't we do something to the government its ended up in the hands of the one group of people who I can think of who are most likely to spectacularly do a worse job than Ofgem.
The MPs / ministers.
Stuff like water is news now and everyone is beating up the water cos, but the root cause of the original issues was lack of investment when they were public. You would literally be back to that position.
Look at HS2!

You looked at the same info I had looked at. Simply not enough detail to really make any decisions. Other than a high level political will one.
If you believe in high level socialisation of costs for grid then ok. But if not there really isn't enough info to make a call on whether SC is "fair" or not

I'm not particularly into progressive taxation BTW. It has to be partly that way because with the levels of wealth inequality we now have it wouldn't work with out some progressiveness.
My main bugbear is idiotic tax and tax inequality.
Eg I cannot support investment tax gains being lower rates than income tax. I don't agree with special tax arrangements for some firms or individuals.
I don't agree with people because they are richer being able to avoid IHT etc
I do support wealth taxation as I believe taxing wealth and reducing tax on income more fairly represents the reason we have a lot of the states costs we do.
We what is national defense, the police, the courts etc if not a cost of enforcing the rights and security of people and their assets?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

On a lighter note, did anyone manage to claim a free Constantine plushy today from Octopus?

I did #flex

 

[danlightbulb]

So do you consider electric and gas grid connections as public services? I don't personally.
Eg we charge people asking for grid connections in difficult places a lot of money, they have no right to them.
So would you be adding the costs of all that to our general taxation?
There are plenty of people in the off grid community that I have followed at times that are off grid purely because the costs quoted to them are mind boggling. I mean well into 5 figures.
If you saying they are public services and should be within general taxation your going to have to connect literally anyone, anywhere for free no?

I certainly do see it as an essential of life yes, the same as a water connection and these days an internet connection. Do these off grid houses have roads that go to their location? With the exception of private land (eg farms) these roads are probably paid for from the public pot? What's the difference between building a road to an off grid location and laying electricity and gas services?

In general I would say that every house in the UK should be connected to all those services as a basic right, so yes I'd agree with that even though it comes with costs. Its my understanding that the rollout of fast internet to remote locations is funded from general taxation, which to my mind is no different?

When all the stuff like BG, NG, BT etc were national it was fairly heavily pushed that they were unaccountable, not cost efficient, and potentially doing stuff we didn't need whilst not doing stuff that we want them to do.
Eg there was an argument we would have seen far faster fibre etc had BT not basically been able to "not bother"

I agree but again we're talking different things. The collection of the funding from the population by central government via taxation doesn't mean that the government have to be in control of delivery, they could simply act as a revenue collector as the system to do so is already in place. Nothing about the running of the business or investment decisions would need to change.

My other major issue on top of the money aspect is that if we passed the responsibility for the cost and in effect the do we or don't we do something to the government its ended up in the hands of the one group of people who I can think of who are most likely to spectacularly do a worse job than Ofgem.
The MPs / ministers.
Stuff like water is news now and everyone is beating up the water cos, but the root cause of the original issues was lack of investment when they were public. You would literally be back to that position.
Look at HS2!

See above. Im not saying that the government takes control of these businesses/organisations, only that they collect a portion of the revenue for them (the portion that is justified to be shared by the whole taxpayer).

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I certainly do see it as an essential of life yes, the same as a water connection and these days an internet connection. Do these off grid houses have roads that go to their location? With the exception of private land (eg farms) these roads are probably paid for from the public pot? What's the difference between building a road to an off grid location and laying electricity and gas services?

In general I would say that every house in the UK should be connected to all those services as a basic right, so yes I'd agree with that even though it comes with costs. Its my understanding that the rollout of fast internet to remote locations is funded from general taxation, which to my mind is no different?


I agree but again we're talking different things. The collection of the funding from the population by central government via taxation doesn't mean that the government have to be in control of delivery, they could simply act as a revenue collector as the system to do so is already in place. Nothing about the running of the business or investment decisions would need to change.



See above. Im not saying that the government takes control of these businesses/organisations, only that they collect a portion of the revenue for them (the portion that is justified to be shared by the whole taxpayer).

Yeah most of the offgrid I have seen aren't hippies living in mud huts (some are). The one I was thinking of was iirc like a £1m build. The only thing that was an issue was the elec cable.
There are many reasons why they can be so much, such as for example the local substation being a fair distance away, or it already being at max capacity so cannot cope with another house hanging off it.
In the end they built a massive solar array, loads of house batteries and some diesel backup generators for the cost of the grid connection.

We almost certainly socialised all these costs many years ago, but now we are squeezed and as such we all look and go but why should I pay.

We build very very few new roads. Certainly we don't build new roads across random places in the countryside!

I can't say I terribly disagree with your wanting to change this. The only thing I would do as a minimum then is say that each supply should have the meter part and local supply part, and the direct costs of those parts (meter readers etc) charged by SC.
If we are saying we should socialise the backbone (be that grid, local sub stations etc) then fine. But the actual connection to the backbone (at local level) and the meters should be born by the householder, plus the ongoing direct costs of supporting that.
We probably need to socialise the repair of local but that should still be paid for by a reasonable collective of people.
Which is probably what the "old" SC was really reflecting.

So your model is that NG etc would instead of getting Ofgen approval have to get Government approval for spending, and then the Gov would hand over the wonga?
Who would own the assets?

 

[danlightbulb]

Yeah it's definitely the grid stuff I'm talking about. The SC isn't probably big enough yet that it's a big enough problem, as it's still just a few hundred a year (although that does make a difference to some people, obviously we've had uproar about the loss of a few hundred winter fuel payment).

But I imagine it might eventually get big enough to be more on the radar and then we have some decisions to make as a society.

Completely agree most of our energy distribution infrastructure is legacy stuff and to do the same now, god knows how it would be funded.

It's the same question in water infrastructure. If the south east is short of water and needs a new reservoir, should only the customers of that regional company pay for it? Scotland may say well why should we who have an abundance of water pay a share of that, but then maybe the south east could equally say well why should we pay a share of your welfare bill or healthcare?

That's why I think overall that national infra should be funded. Funded not ran.

So your model is that NG etc would instead of getting Ofgen approval have to get Government approval for spending, and then the Gov would hand over the wonga?
Who would own the assets?

All the government would do is collect the necessary revenue via the existing tax system. Then hand it over. The current regulators and companies don't see any change, they still make all the funding decisions. It's just that instead of a chunk of revenue coming from direct billed charges it's just passed on by the government. Asset ownership doesn't change.

So basically if an energy company collects £1000 from you currently and £300 is standing charge, then we could decide that half of that SC is funding infrastructure and should be fully socialised. So now the energy company would collect £850 from you and the other £150 is collected via your taxes. If you're an average taxpayer the amount you pay wouldn't much change, but if you were below the tax threshold then you wouldn't be paying that £150, but a higher earner would be paying a bigger proportion of it.

 

[ci_newman]

On a lighter note, did anyone manage to claim a free Constantine plushy today from Octopus?

I did #flex

Yep, I did too

 

[Richie]

I think the problem is that arknor is far from normal is this regard, but then so are we to some extent.
We are probably the worst sorts for knowing our usage and data as we care because of the solar.

I'm glad you said this as, sometimes, it comes across that the people who are wealthy enough to afford things like solar, batteries, EVs etc forget that some people don't have these luxuries

 

[Neil79]

During the Summer £40 a month
Last month - £65
This month - £75 and still rising

Still better than £145 - £200 a month!

Guess those new storage heaters, good insulation and me being on Octopus GO tarrif from summer is helping!

Update

28 Oct 2024 - 27 Nov 2024606.81 kWh
We charged your account £113.32

Cold month!

 

[200sols]

I think the problem is that arknor is far from normal is this regard, but then so are we to some extent.
We are probably the worst sorts for knowing our usage and data as we care because of the solar.

We are far from normal in that we actually look at the data, even a lot of people with solar dont bother. Most people just want energy they dont care how it works or want to be worrying about peak power on a 13amp limit etc.

Imagine tripping everytime you used a high power item...

 

[dlockers]

On a lighter note, did anyone manage to claim a free Constantine plushy today from Octopus?

I did #flex

Tried from 1500 onwards

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Tried from 1500 onwards

Same, it was this thread that reminded me!

It’s back today by the looks of it?

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

We are far from normal in that we actually look at the data, even a lot of people with solar dont bother. Most people just want energy they dont care how it works or want to be worrying about peak power on a 13amp limit etc.

Imagine tripping everytime you used a high power item...

Agree on all counts

If we moved to a SC based on peak usage then maybe people would stop going on about the irrelevance of being low users.
They could then play the game of only one device on at a time to their hearts content
Maybe washing at the local stream would take off again.
As I said I used to be a low user in my early 20s, but I was probably exactly the same in regards spikes as I am now.

The grid isn't scaled to cope with total demand, its scaled to cope with the peaks. It simply has to be right.
I mean its almost like the people running the grid would on occasion ask everyone not to switch on the kettle in the middle of the break for uber popular programmes as they had a massive spike at that point.