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Just been shopping around as our current fixed rate (only 1 year from last july) runs out. I've done some calcs on the actual gas and elec we've used in those 12 months - so reflects working from home for almost all that period which may or may not continue.
But just applying the new best rates available (fixed 2 years) our bill will jump from £86 a month to £114 a month! Thats a 32.5% increase!
Can see a lot of people struggling with a jump like that, even more so if factoring in ongoing extra time at home working, or even worse jobless.
Just going through the same here - at first I thought I'd messed up the comparison data but sadly not.
Here in Spain "Endesa" have just changed our peak/off peak hours and introduced new pricing as part of their "shake-up".
Not looking forward to the next bill!
Gulp.
Look out the window at the size of the wood pile.... Feel less afraid
Picks up text from friendly tree surgeon....oh another load of Oak coming tomorrow.....
Feel glad I remembered to refill the petrol can yesterday when filling the car, as the 'saws are going to be busy
Feel even less afraid.
On a serious note though, shell rises are painful so consumers deserve more protection, but overall energy is probably still get to cheap, higher costs to encourage more efficient use seem beneficial.
£86/month sounds a lot anyway. I'm on £45 a month, gas and elec., with Ovo, and I'm in credit by around £90.
I think the last time I paid £45 a month for combined gas/leccy was 20 years ago! 🙂
Ours is currently £135/month ish for a 3 bed semi.
Look out the window at the size of the wood pile…. Feel less afraid
Picks up text from friendly tree surgeon….oh another load of Oak coming tomorrow…..
Feel glad I remembered to refill the petrol can yesterday when filling the car, as the ‘saws are going to be busy
Feel even less afraid.
Oh cool you're going to smugly pollute the problem away.
My input to the STW comparison website
3 bed semi
2 adults
Mobile sex filth pond (or whatever was agreed as the official name)
Gas only heating/water everything else leccy
Went up to £140 in Jan after 12 months at £99
Sex pond thing to blame for the rise mostly and even that is efficiently run.
Yep, smugly polluting my way to low bills.
Why has my renewable electricity gone up when it is generated in this country?
But at least you're saving a few quid.
More than a few it seems
Cool I'm sure that will be a great comfort to asthmatic children who get hospitalised regularly (like my step-daughter).
overall energy is probably still get to cheap, higher costs to encourage more efficient use seem beneficial.
You really are a smug tool.
Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation Partnership urged people with an alternative means of heating to stop using wood-burners.
But you know, you're ok, so...
Midget-p I couldn't understand your reaction then checked my earlier post. My phone swipe keyboard had entered 'shell' when I meant to type "sharp".
Yes unfortunately I do think higher energy costs are probably going to play a large part in shifting our behaviour and getting us all to consume less. Changes need to be made at a sensible pace and with cost increases helping to fund the changes in behaviour (eg subsidizing green energy and insulation, not subsidizing fossil fuels). I'm not saying those that can afford at fine and the poor cute back to save us all. Fuel poverty is not a good thing. That would be bad in many many ways.
not done the sums yet but our domestic energy prices will have increased for sure due to working from home....But....we're saving at least £200 a month on petrol/deisel and have the opportunity of going down to one car iwht all the savings that entails so on balance we're probably better off.
Energy is only going to get more expensive.The levels of investment needed to decarbonise (the big oil companies are investing hundreds of billions in new technology), electricity is expensive anyway...alot mores thats fossil fuels and the fact the government needs to make up the loss in fossil fuel taxes.
yup... 20p/kwh... ouch... electric everything (bar heating) at our place, it's a big bill now...
I'm on Octopus Agile and this year has been awful price wise to the point I'm pondering switching back to their Go tariff. I think some of the issues this year has been a couple of nuclear plants have been on "extended" maintenance and long periods of still air over the UK.
£86/month sounds a lot anyway. I’m on £45 a month, gas and elec., with Ovo, and I’m in credit by around £90.
There are so many variables involved that you can't possibly say that. For example, my single mate lives in a modern well insulated one bedroom flat that barely needs heating in the middle of winter because of all the other flats around his. I live in a 1980s 4 bed detached house with my wife and two almost teenage children.
Guess who has the higher energy bills?
Think yourself lucky you've got mains gas, as it makes your electricity 5% cheaper than we can buy it.
As a comparison - just bought 1000 litres of oil, £460.
Cost £320 in November.
Due to Brexit the supply is restricted at the minute as the electricity and gas is stuck at the ports waiting to get into the country…
I thought it was the transport of live animals that was causing the problem - we just can't import enough hamsters to keep up with demand.
I’m on Octopus Agile and this year has been awful price wise to the point I’m pondering switching back to their Go tariff. I think some of the issues this year has been a couple of nuclear plants have been on “extended” maintenance and long periods of still air over the UK.
I did that last week. I’m so conditioned to avoiding power use 4-7pm it’s odd to go back to not really caring. Should probably have done it earlier but was holding out for some return to where it was.
Octopus Compare app can pull your usage and show what it would cost on the different tariffs. It’s also made it clear that for weeks there’s been no time of day when Agile was cheaper. As Agile tracks wholesale I’m guessing Go will have to be revised soon too.
I jumped from Agile to Go Faster in March. According to OctopusCompare this has saved me £100 so far.
Admittedly it’s not a wholly fair comparison as we now use a lot more power in the 4-7pm slot than we did under Agile, but I’d bet we’re at least 50 quid up.
Commercial electric prices in New Zealand apparently going through the roof as the hydro reservoirs are running very low due to lack of rain. Lots of electric heating is used. Having to import fossil fuels as an "alternative" fuel.
I think some of the issues this year has been a couple of nuclear plants have been on “extended” maintenance
Hunterston has been operational since last August barring a few weeks overlap of inspection outages over April and May, we're shutting down at the end of the year though. Dungeness hasn't generated anything since 2018 and finally got shitcanned last month (not that you'd notice as it never bloody ran anyway).
Why has my renewable electricity gone up when it is generated in this country?
Missed this yesterday. It's because electricity is a traded commodity which reasonably tracks the price of Gas, the backup fuel to wind.
Anyone getting onto a new deal right now is suffering the effects of some really expensive prices right now, I suspect they will moderate in the next couple of months.
Don't you just love the market economy for utilities.
Not.
Arse-end of a pandemic the market comes to everyone's rescue.
Why has my renewable electricity gone up when it is generated in this country?
Because renewable energy is subsidised to the tune of £10BN a year.
Because renewable energy is subsidised to the tune of £10BN a year.
Odd because Extinction Rebellion and green peace would be shouting from the roof tops about different numbers in 2020.
C~5bn for fossil fuels and 156million for green energy.
With the headline *fossil fuels get 32* more subsidy than green energy*
Seems hard to find accurate numbers non politically motivated answers on the matter.
Agendas matter
To irc: I wouldn't credit that too much - look at longer term wholesale energy and gas prices, and his arguments fall to pieces sharpish.
Bascially the gas price is driving everyones price up and there's absolutely no reason to believe that won't continue
You can claim £125 (per person) back on tax to cover the WFH expenses. You can retroactively claim for last year too.
Only qualification is you've done at least one day from home in the year
Thats a 32.5% increase!
Can see a lot of people struggling with a jump like that, even more so if factoring in ongoing extra time at home working, or even worse jobless.
There certainly will be people who will struggle with £28/month extra. However the people who struggle most with money are already getting shafted by being on pre-payment meters, so I'm not sure helping out the needy will be either the energy provider, regulator or the government's priority.
If you are out of work it would be particularly painful. If you are working from home I'd guess most people are still financially better off by saving on commuting costs, unless you walk/cylce to work.
Bascially the gas price is driving everyones price up and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that won’t continue
It will because of inflation of course, but IIRC from our market commentary the other week, there's supply pressure at the moment which is driving a particular spike. One of the reasons was REALLY high prices in the far east, which means bulk LPG tankers were being diverted there instead of offloading to the UK and there were a couple of others I can't remember. Those circumstances will reduce short-medium term and the price will fall, this will mean cheaper deals later in the year*.
Maybe don't get into a contract with early exit fees just now, then you can change if my predictions come true, or you can generally change to a better tariff with the same supplier without penalty.
*Not any inside info and I'm not an energy trader, just my best guess.
Is there not some factor of cutting the ability of energy providers to charge the lazy high rates? Now you are going from cheaper energy by switching constantly for some, with others paying high prices to now everyone has to pay more or less the same?
Yes, there were caps applied to the standard tariffs for people who can't be arsed to change. I suppose a lot of those people are OAP's or other consumers who are less digitally capable, and the only real way to access the best deals is thorough fairly complex websites but it's still a little annoying.
edit - can't be arsed to change is possibly unfair way to describe this cohort of consumers.
Oh there's limits on pre-payment tariffs too, but that's fine because they are often installed for people who are on the bones of their arse partly to recover debts, in which circumstance they should definitely not be paying massive premiums.
I’m on Octopus Agile and this year has been awful price wise
This is interesting as I thought that it was meant to be the future - smets2 meters, smart tariffs, set your washing machine and car charging to low national grid load times to get the best prices....?
Interesting stuff. I'm on Octopus Go at the moment and enjoying 4 hours of 5ppkwh overnight to juice the car up. I was weary of Agile and WFH meant I didn't want to be worrying about making a brew etc. during peak times. I need to see when my current deal last until as it sounds like a price hike isn't far off..
The govt itself forecast ongoing subsidy for renewables. In 2017 they forecast over £8BN for this year. That was at 2011/12 pricesthough. So more in today's prices. Not too far off that first link I gave.
Also those numbers don't include any cost for the balancing the intermittent nature of wind and solar. More distribution networks cost and the cost of having gas power on standby for when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/renewable-electricity-a-subsidy-free-future/
And other view of the subsidy effect on prices
I think our containers of electricity are still trying to get through the Suez Canal backlog.
Agile WAS great for WFH, away from the super low (or negative) overnights, it was pretty cheap through the day. Just needed to shift running appliances like the washing machine outside the 4-7pm peak. With young kids the cooking tended to be done by then too.
They're open about the pricing, it's 2.2x wholesale price (+12p 4-7pm) - the trouble is that wholesale prices have gone up and it's magnified by that formula. I still love the concept but not enough to spend an extra £30 a month for it.