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

[jpaul]

The prices aren't unusually low they are at 40-100p/therm which is the long term historic band if you exclude Covid and post Covid.

as well, these are market prices, and don't reflect the energy pre-bought on the futures market, so could be even cheaper ?

media seems to continually compare cap against wholesale price too , but that's not the price the energy had been pre-purchased at,
and, for cap setting, the price of pre-purchased energy wasn't an unknown;
perhaps generators accounts give a breakdown of how much the energy was sold at.

Got a link for that or is it just a made up example?

all the furore about people having direct debits set erratically , seems evidence lacking ... ofgem are tasked to investigate by kwasi kwarteng, which could be interpreted as a political pacification manouver.

why don't energy companies just post the algorithm, to avoid speculation, or, did someone reverse engineer it/them.

 

[bigmike20vt]

Not getting into any arguments but my experience is as follows.... I am with Octopus and my account was in arrears of £130 due to Crypto mining for 6 months and me not updating my DD. then last July my solar went online and over the next 3 months i paid off my deficit and tried to cut my DD to £60 for combined leccy and gas. The automated system said I could not lower that much, I fired off a mail to octopus explaining i had battery backed up Solar and knew my payments were too high. a few days later i got a mail agreeing to lower to what i wanted but they warned me if i fall behind it will auto adjust. Fair enough.

this worked fine for me till december time where with lack of solar i went back into arrears again. preparing for the dreaded price increases and the end of my fixed term at the end of April i manually upped my payment to £90........ I ended up on an amazing deal and i am now in credit again. once more i have tried to lower to £60, and it said it cant do it automatically but to contact support. I suspect once again, once they see i am paying more than i am using they will again agree to cut payments.

TLDR the DD payments are an estimate for those who just want to click and forget, but it is our finances and ultimately it is our responsibility to watch them and if needed take control. IME Octopus are more than fair when it comes to taking payment IF you talk to them and give them some stats. that is just my experience however.

 

[Greebo]

the (negligent) sky article implies current govt are responsible - but issues was known in 2011, france having 90 days storage and us a few weeks didn't happen overnight

Report: UK 'must double gas storage capacity by 2020'

www.planningresource.co.uk

when was the last time I saw a giant above ground gas container - did the councils sell off the land, from, then, nationalised gas ?.


maybe with an older combi boiler standby is higher - but ours is <10 years



Aldi and other supermarkets need those electronic item price tags, as it must be a full time job updating the tags at the moment (butter, cream, milk, coffee ...)
I'm sure i've seen them somewhere in the uk/france.

Those massive gas tanks you used to see in every city/town was down to the old way gas was supplied to properties. Once they werent needed to smooth out supplies to cities and the gas was ample to just come direct to peoples houses they were decommissioned by British Gas and sold off for development. I used to work for a company on 80s/90s and we decommissioned about 10 of them. Expensive job as lots of toxic chemicals/sludge inside of them but still worthwhile for what they got from developers.

 

[chrcoluk]

Not getting into any arguments but my experience is as follows.... I am with Octopus and my account was in arrears of £130 due to Crypto mining for 6 months and me not updating my DD. then last July my solar went online and over the next 3 months i paid off my deficit and tried to cut my DD to £60 for combined leccy and gas. The automated system said I could not lower that much, I fired off a mail to octopus explaining i had battery backed up Solar and knew my payments were too high. a few days later i got a mail agreeing to lower to what i wanted but they warned me if i fall behind it will auto adjust. Fair enough.

this worked fine for me till december time where with lack of solar i went back into arrears again. preparing for the dreaded price increases and the end of my fixed term at the end of April i manually upped my payment to £90........ I ended up on an amazing deal and i am now in credit again. once more i have tried to lower to £60, and it said it cant do it automatically but to contact support. I suspect once again, once they see i am paying more than i am using they will again agree to cut payments.

TLDR the DD payments are an estimate for those who just want to click and forget, but it is our finances and ultimately it is our responsibility to watch them and if needed take control. IME Octopus are more than fair when it comes to taking payment IF you talk to them and give them some stats. that is just my experience however.

So sounds like the staff can override the automatic system so when they agree to lower it, then it sticks?

 

[Pez]

Is there a way to ask your supplier to bill for your actual consumption monthly? Not an amount created by algorithym?

 

[HungryHippos]

Is there a way to ask your supplier to bill for your actual consumption monthly? Not an amount created by algorithym?

Yes I'm on Monthly Whole Amount DD with EDF and they take my actual usage each month, based on smart meter readings that are sent from my legacy smart meter.

Can do without a smart meter I think but you'd need to submit them manually once a month or so.

 

[SDK^]

Is there a way to ask your supplier to bill for your actual consumption monthly? Not an amount created by algorithym?

That just means you will need to budget for a large increase in your monthly Winter bills.

 

[jpaul]

media seems to continually compare cap against wholesale price too , but that's not the price the energy had been pre-purchased at,
and, for cap setting, the price of pre-purchased energy wasn't an unknown;
perhaps generators accounts give a breakdown of how much the energy was sold at.

interesting comment from 9may ft article V titled : Trade secrets: oil majors keep quiet on a key profit driver (can't seem to post an untagged link)
so 50% of bp profits are from trading other peoples energy, not what they extract themselves;
Not sure they should be condemned for that, which is equally what the UK supply companies are doing on the futures markets.

​

The last time BP published a breakdown of trading revenue in its annual results was in 2005, when its profits from oil, gas and power dealing reached $2.97bn. By comparing the delta between the revenues BP would have generated from selling its own production with the reported earnings for its different divisions, Clint calculates BP could have made as much as $1.2bn from gas trading and $400mn from oil trading in the first quarter.

 

[TheVoice]

Is there a way to ask your supplier to bill for your actual consumption monthly? Not an amount created by algorithym?

Yes, but you'll probably need to speak to someone (call, live chat etc) as they don't seem to like to advertise the option.

 

[dlockers]

What are your suggestions for further support then?
Remembering, there are long term negative consequences for free hand outs and further taxes on energy companies.

Windfall tax on record profits from energy firms that subsidises energy prices

 

[jpaul]

existing £150 cc rebate is costing £3B which is also what we would get from BP if we took their generation profit, so just another meager £150

govt will now need some money to pay paul/EDF, too

Electricite de France SA’s Hinkley Point B nuclear plant could be kept open to help the UK alleviate a power supply crunch in the winter.
The station, in the west of England, is due to shut down this summer but EDF said it would consider extending operations through the winter if asked to do so by the British government. Ministers have been on the hunt for extra supplies that can replace gas in power generation as Russia’s war in Ukraine has boosted prices to double normal levels.

....
The government is currently holding talks with the operators of three coal-fired power stations, including EDF, about keeping several units open to provide extra power supplies this winter. While it wouldn’t impact the UK’s goal to abandon the fuel by 2024, paying stations to keep operating would be uncomfortable for Prime Minister Boris Johnson after his push to phase out coal at the COP26 climate talks last year.

 

[413x]

Interested to know what you lot get from a baseline electricity usage?

I'm talking about nothing actively on. But with things like TV on standby, router on, fridge and freezer on.

Looks like I'm hitting 100W or 2p an hour on my new smart meter.

I'd say this is... Normal?

 

[NotAGolf]

Interested to know what you lot get from a baseline electricity usage?

I'm talking about nothing actively on. But with things like TV on standby, router on, fridge and freezer on.

Looks like I'm hitting 100W or 2p an hour on my new smart meter.

I'd say this is... Normal?

I only had my smart meter installed yesterday, so don't have much data, but lowest I've seen it hover around is 90w with pretty much everything off.

 

[MatsyLR]

Interested to know what you lot get from a baseline electricity usage?

I'm talking about nothing actively on. But with things like TV on standby, router on, fridge and freezer on.

Looks like I'm hitting 100W or 2p an hour on my new smart meter.

I'd say this is... Normal?

100w with everything off seems about normal.
You still have your alarm system, fridge, freezer, router, lots of LED lights on various items, boiler still using a small amount of electric unless you flip it off (red switch usually on combi boilers), clock on oven etc

 

[Brutal biff]

Won't be long before it's cheaper go Costa then boil the kettle at home

 

[Freakbro]

@413x Yea, I've mostly moved out of my house and the only electrical items there are a fridge freezer and chest freezer and I'm using bang on 2kw a day, so 2.4 with the rest of your stuff on standby seems reasonable

 

[SDK^]

Windfall tax on record profits from energy firms that subsidises energy prices

That option just brings long term negative consequences through energy companies moving investment to other countries.

 

[chrcoluk]

existing £150 cc rebate is costing £3B which is also what we would get from BP if we took their generation profit, so just another meager £150

govt will now need some money to pay paul/EDF, too

Well the £150 was not targeted enough. Just giving it to everyone in Band A-D properties was stupid.

There would also be other money if they stopped throwing tax cuts around in areas where it isnt needed. There is also the windfall they have been getting from fuel taxation, which I believe they saving for election bribes and further wealth tax cuts.

 

[413x]

Thanks guys. I thought it sounded reasonable.
But higher than expected. I mean it's still 40-50p a day. Does show how things mount up.

 

[chrcoluk]

Thanks guys. I thought it sounded reasonable.
But higher than expected. I mean it's still 40-50p a day. Does show how things mount up.

Missed your post but checking my notes my baseline depended if the fridge was cooling or not.

Without it cooling about 48w. about 110w with it cooling. Because the fridge is on and off its hard to know what that translates to in daily cost. It seems to be on noticeably longer than even a few weeks ago likely due to ambient temp increase.

When I went away for a weekend a few weeks ago, my daily usage was 3 units, but I now know 25w of that was some weird iissue on my immersion heater circuit, 25w for 24 hours constant is about 0.6 units I think. This also was with 2 lights left on, one of them a 15w light, the other 6w. So that would take it down to about 2 units, so about 55-60p a day close to yours.