Energy price rises and price cap discussion.

[Bletchleyite]

I don't see why people have an issue with the standing charge. It costs money to connect you and keep you connected for the fixed infrastructure to provide a supply, and it costs money to generate. This model therefore makes most sense. Though the standing charge increasing as energy itself does is a bit silly, bar a bit of an increase for increases in diesel prices in maintenance vans.

 

[Deltic1961]

My lovely wife measures water in to cups before boiling the kettle but still spends 20 minutes in the shower washing her hair. No helping some people.

 

[jon0844]

Just incorporate the standing charge in the unit charge, so heavier users pay more.

In fact, given the current crisis, it would seem fairer to have a tariff structure (like you had in the past) where the first nnn units are at a reduced rate. That would help the poorer users. Given it isn't exactly easy to share electricity or gas, I'd imagine it being pretty hard to abuse.

It might just encourage people to change their habits and seek to reduce consumption, without still being massively penalised as is the case now. Despite getting your usage down, you're still going to pay the same at best, and likely still a lot more.

 

[DelayRepay]

I don't see why people have an issue with the standing charge. It costs money to connect you and keep you connected for the fixed infrastructure to provide a supply, and it costs money to generate. This model therefore makes most sense. Though the standing charge increasing as energy itself does is a bit silly, bar a bit of an increase for increases in diesel prices in maintenance vans.

Generally, low users have an issue because they think someone else should cover their share of the costs!

I don't have an issue with it - it's just like the old line rental when we had landline phones. But I do have an issue with the fact it's so high due to the inclusion of the Supplier of Last Resort costs.

 

[Bletchleyite]

But I do have an issue with the fact it's so high due to the inclusion of the Supplier of Last Resort costs.

Indeed, the Government missed a serious trick by not treating the money held in direct debit accounts the same as bank accounts, i.e. requiring it to be ringfenced from the business, with the business only able to consider it income when it debited an actual bill from it when a meter reading has occurred.

 

[Deltic1961]

It seems literally everything has been added to bills some way or another without telling us. This needs to stop now.

Insulation programmes
Failing retailers
Green initiatives
Smart meters

etc

 

[jon0844]

Indeed, the Government missed a serious trick by not treating the money held in direct debit accounts the same as bank accounts, i.e. requiring it to be ringfenced from the business, with the business only able to consider it income when it debited an actual bill from it when a meter reading has occurred.

It wasn't missing a trick. It was intentional to allow these firms to use customer money as working capital - as was explained in a Select Committee. They could use it to make more money, with the expectation that they'd grow to be as big as the main players, and for a while it seemed to work - until it didn't. Then, they went bust and we got stuck with the bill.

I wonder if people would have gladly built up large credits (it's common for people to budget such that in the summer they may be £500+ in credit) if they knew how it worked. I expect 99% of people thought the money was ringfenced. I think the select committee thought so too.

 

[Howardh]

My lovely wife measures water in to cups before boiling the kettle but still spends 20 minutes in the shower washing her hair. No helping some people.

Takes me 0.05 seconds to wash my hair. 0.10 seconds if I wash both of them

Read a lot about little but useful savings here and there, but overall will make very little inroads to the bills unless heating is almost completely off. Might as well have these little treats like a hot bath now and again!

 

[jon0844]

Forget £11 a day, the New Statesman reckons home workers may be spending £30 a day!

Why energy prices could kill working from home

The new price cap changes the calculation on whether staying at home is still cheaper than going to the office.

www.newstatesman.com

There's a pay wall, but on Twitter it mentions a boiler costing £4.80 an hour to run, and suggesting it will be cheaper to pay £3500 on a season ticket to commute than stay at home.

I really do admire those who work so hard to justify getting everyone back to work, then running a poll that (at the time of me posting) was about 82% in favour of continuing to work at home...!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Forget £11 a day, the New Statesman reckons home workers may be spending £30 a day!

My energy costs about £3.15 per day (averaged through the year) on the current cap. Getting it to increase tenfold would be a hell of a hike even based on the fairly hellish hikes that have occurred, and a fair chunk of that will be standing charge anyway, so you'd probably need a twentyfold increase to get it to £30.

And that's in a fairly bog standard 1970s Barratt terrace, which is hardly a Passivhaus.

 

[Deltic1961]

Barratt started up beside us in Ellon. They were OK for a start but nobody touches them with a barge pole up here now. 5 star builder my a**e.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Barratt started up beside us in Ellon. They were OK for a start but nobody touches them with a barge pole up here now. 5 star builder my a**e.

Nowt wrong with my house. It looks very 70s, but it's solidly built out of brick rather than wooden framed and has large windows rather than tiny pinholes of modern houses, and seems despite this to perform better on energy than most 1990s-2000s houses do.

 

[Deltic1961]

Nowt wrong with my house. It looks very 70s, but it's solidly built out of brick rather than wooden framed and has large windows rather than tiny pinholes of modern houses, and seems despite this to perform better on energy than most 1990s-2000s houses do.

As I said the older ones were fine, but once greed cut in they started reducing the quality of building to greatly increase profit.... As did many other house builders hence the crap were in now with lack of insulation etc.

 

[Dai Corner]

A group of consumers I hadn't thought about until an acquaintance told me about his experience just now is those who were with one of the failed energy suppliers transferred to a supplier of last resort.

Not only did he have no opportunity to fix his tariff and is therefore 'on the cap ' he's also paying additional standing charge to fund the refund the failed supplier owed him.

 

[tomuk]

A group of consumers I hadn't thought about until an acquaintance told me about his experience just now is those who were with one of the failed energy suppliers transferred to a supplier of last resort.

Not only did he have no opportunity to fix his tariff and is therefore 'on the cap ' he's also paying additional standing charge to fund the refund the failed supplier owed him.

The current arrangements around supplier failure do seem poor. I would have hoped Ofgem would have learnt over the last 20 years. As someone who was involved in a supplier failure in the early days of competition including a £1m+ court case lessons should have been learned as they say.

 

[Deltic1961]

Ofgem are clearly on the side of the companies, as are literally all "regulators"

 

[Domh245]

There's a pay wall, but on Twitter it mentions a boiler costing £4.80 an hour to run, and suggesting it will be cheaper to pay £3500 on a season ticket to commute than stay at home.

It's not entirely impossible (though a bit disingenuous) - at the average October cap that works out as a 32kW (input*) boiler going at 100% for the full hour. Assuming it's a regular (non-combi) boiler, you're looking at 15+ radiators to merit that sort of size! It is definitely a stretch to say say the commuting is cheaper though, you'd need to run that boiler at full chat for 730 hours (18.25 ish 40h weeks) for it to make sense


*Unfortunately, you aren't billed for heat generator output, but for it's input (unless you're on a heat network scheme!)

 

[Pete_uk]

All these community facilities keeping people warm won't do much for the COVID figures...

As for schools shutting because of the cost of heating them, those in Westminster CANT be so ignorant as to think that such a thing would end up with anything but a LOT of hassle.

 

[birchesgreen]

Do people with central heating really run their boilers all day? Unless you have your windows and doors open surely unnecessary?

 

[philosopher]

The other category excluded from price caps are people in flats served by a communal gas supply from which heat is drawn. I think this is a relatively small number but over-represented in London (I'm in that category!).

I am in one of these flats too. At the moment the heating is charged at 6p per Kilowatt Hour, so 1p less than the current price cap, however the standing charge is 78p a day, which is 51p greater than the price cap. My flat is heated by a communal combined heat and power gas boiler.

The high standing charge is not as bad as it seems as I have lower maintenance costs than I would if I had my own boiler. I do not use much heating which means the majority of the bill goes to the standing charge, even in winter.

 

[Deltic1961]

Do people with central heating really run their boilers all day? Unless you have your windows and doors open surely unnecessary?

Our Bosch system has a wall mounted unit that is supposed to be more "eco" by running the boiler to a thermostatic controlled temperature during certain hours rather than heating the house say for an hour in the morning, again at lunchtime and again in the evening.

We're ran it that way for the last two winters and yes, the house is warm all day and in the evening, but I'm convinced it has actually cost us much more.

No way of actually monitoring it to find out though. Back to the old way this winter however.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

But not all electricity is traded at the marginal price is it? My (big 6) supplier must have long term contracts in place to enable them to offer me a price around half the cap?

Indeed this is the point im trying to make that marginal pricing is not helping in this environment.

Given that (most) big six supplier own their own power stations they could theoretically bypass the market altogether

They largely do as to how much each supplier has got covered by long term contracts isn't easy to find out but the balancing market is less than 20% of energy consumed daily so that indicates to me a big chunk is. Hence my view that NETA needs to be suspended and teh energy cap and let the market find its own level.

Nuclear and renewables, yes. But a lot of them are gas-fired.

still have their gas on long term contracts though

 

[skyhigh]

Though the standing charge increasing as energy itself does is a bit silly, bar a bit of an increase for increases in diesel prices in maintenance vans.

Which seems to have been realised, as with the new caps the limit on standing charge has only increased by 1p.

 

[jon0844]

Do people with central heating really run their boilers all day? Unless you have your windows and doors open surely unnecessary?

I suppose someone with a dumb thermostat in the hall might, but surely everyone has at least some of smart thermostat or timer by now?

I can control each and every rad manually. For much of the time there should be no demand for the boiler at all.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I suppose someone with a dumb thermostat in the hall might, but surely everyone has at least some of smart thermostat or timer by now?

I can control each and every rad manually. For much of the time there should be no demand for the boiler at all.

British Gas Hive is the most common due to their marketing, but it's little more than an elaborate central remote control. Very, very few people have electronic thermostatic radiator valves where each radiator can demand heat individually, though they are now looking an increasingly good investment. Tado offers them but they're costly, mine is just the single centralised one with manual TRVs that I just use to balance the system.

I'm considering moving house, otherwise I'd probably get them, limiting heating to the office room during the day, as it is quite small, would bring quite a saving.

 

[jon0844]

British Gas Hive is very common, but it's little more than an elaborate central remote control. Very, very few people have electronic thermostatic radiator valves where each radiator can demand heat individually, though they are now looking an increasingly good investment.

It was arguably a good investment even before prices went mad, but now they're a must.

I don't yet have my hot water managed by the smart hub, using a timer instead, but that's around 16p a day at current rates. Not sure I need to worry about the water too much.

 

[Cowley]

EGR and DPF do not prevent particulate emissions. They just reduce them. If yours isn't Euro 6 then your particulate emissions are too high.



It wouldn't, because the particulate and NOx standards are different between petrol and diesel cars.



No, these have to comply to the same standards, and the TfL bus fleet will increasingly be full-electric.



What figures, can you provide a reputable reference? (For the record, the right wing Press, i.e. the Mail/Express/Scum/Torygraph/GB News or similar is not "reputable"; a source like TfL would do).



Compliant petrol cars are very cheap. Euro 4 petrol, which is the standard, became mandatory from 2005. Any non compliant petrol car is seventeen years old - hardly anything of that age bar classics is still on the road, and as classics are really just for occasional use you'll just pay the charge for those. £500 will probably buy you a compliant small petrol car, or certainly £1000.

No no no. Stop this car emissions shenanigans right there before it goes any further please!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do people with central heating really run their boilers all day? Unless you have your windows and doors open surely unnecessary?

Mine was set to 21 degrees all day and 16 degrees overnight (though it rarely actually drops that far). I've reduced it to 19 to save cost and will put an extra jumper on, but yes, I work on the basis of a constant temperature when I'm in except at night. I use a Tado system so if I go out it allows it to drop and brings it back up as I start moving towards home again.

I think that approach provides a better comfort-cost ratio than blasting to 22 twice a day for a couple of hours as many do.

 

[Roast Veg]

British Gas Hive is the most common due to their marketing, but it's little more than an elaborate central remote control. Very, very few people have electronic thermostatic radiator valves where each radiator can demand heat individually, though they are now looking an increasingly good investment. Tado offers them but they're costly, mine is just the single centralised one with manual TRVs that I just use to balance the system.

I'm considering moving house, otherwise I'd probably get them, limiting heating to the office room during the day, as it is quite small, would bring quite a saving.

I installed the Drayton Wiser one in my house last year - looking like one of the smartest moves in the world right about now.

 

[Russel]

I don't see why people have an issue with the standing charge. It costs money to connect you and keep you connected for the fixed infrastructure to provide a supply, and it costs money to generate. This model therefore makes most sense. Though the standing charge increasing as energy itself does is a bit silly, bar a bit of an increase for increases in diesel prices in maintenance vans.

The standing charge it's self, I understand and have no issue with, I do have an issue with how it has been increased to cover the costs of the failed energy companies.

I've just had a look at my bill for July, my gas usage cost 87 pence, the standing charge cost me £8...