Energy prices.

[gavroche]

I am with Octopus and received an email this morning advising me that my monthly DD will go up by £14.00 a month starting in February. To be honest, I expected more than that but may be it is because we are careful about our energy usage, that it is not going up steeply.
On the other hand, it might go up again in April when the new prices are supposed to start. It remains to be seen.
Whatever happens, I will stay with my present supplier as shopping around will not make much difference for a lot of bother.

 

[Sterlo]

According to Martin Lewis, if you're under contract (don't know if you are or not), they can't do that and you can report them? I'm on a fixed rate until June/July and I'm expecting a large increase. However I pay monthly direct debit for what I've used, I won't pay a fixed monthly amount because I refuse to give them as much as they claim they need.

 

[DCLane]

I'm on a fixed contract for 2 years with Sainsbury's Energy from October last year and they can't do this.

I'm guessing you're not on a fixed contract but a standard one.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

I am on a fixed rate until 2024 - which I am quite happy about

I just checked and to get a long term fixed at the moment would cost well over TWICE what I currently pay.
The variable rate is £18 a month over what I pay

Seems like I accidentally got onto a fixed rate just in time!

 

[PaulSB]

We have been moved from People's Energy to British Gas with significant price increases. People's Energy in ( ):

Electricity pkwh 20.14 (14.87) standing charge 24.38 (7.42)
Gas pkwh 4.04 (2.75) 26.12 (7.42)

BG have estimated our gas usage at significantly lower than it was with PE. I'm waiting to see the outcome of this and have decided to pay up at the end if needed rather than let BG have my money in advance.

What is very, very worrying is the prices BG are offering if I switch away from the current one:

Electricity 34.44 and 40.82
Gas 7.71 and 42.56

This would see our annual bill based on the last 12 months with People's Energy rise from £1198 to £1944 - 61%. One thing I do not understand is why the Standing Charges have increased so much, I can't see how these are justified when absolutely nothing has changed. It can only be BG is top heavy on administration and perhaps grossly inefficient?

 

[biggs682]

My parents fixed contract has just ended and new rate is 10% higher than previous .
Luckily ours is fixed for another 18 months.
We kept saying to my parents to swap plans before the rises started but no

 

[midlife]

I'm on a fixed rate at the moment, just paid my quarterly bill of £602, that plus the oil fired boiler it's not cheap to run a house.

Silly question, if you are on a variable rate with the cap in place, what happens if you use a whole load of electric? Do you get a lot of free electric when you hit the cap?

 

[fossyant]

variable here, but we've got a hot tub and two gaming PC's which use quite a large amount of juice. Curently about 19p per kwh, and I'm watching it monthly !!!

 

[PeteXXX]

Octopus here, too. We fixed ours for a year a few months ago. It went up a fair bit, but not as much as it could have done if we'd left it.
We save a bit more electricity and water through personal economies than we used to so not quite the impact the rises could have had!

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

I'm on a fixed rate at the moment, just paid my quarterly bill of £602, that plus the oil fired boiler it's not cheap to run a house.

Silly question, if you are on a variable rate with the cap in place, what happens if you use a whole load of electric? Do you get a lot of free electric when you hit the cap?

The cap is on the charge per unit
so if you use more units of electric then you pay more - just at the capped rate

So you cannot try to run an Aluminium smelting plant off your garage socket - sorry!

 

[vickster]

The cap is on the charge per unit
so if you use more units of electric then you pay more - just at the capped rate

So you cannot try to run an Aluminium smelting plant off your garage socket - sorry!

Or a cannabis farm

 

[figbat]

Out here in the sticks we don't have mains gas, so we heat the house and water with heating oil. When we first moved here (around 8 years ago) we paid 60p/litre which is the most we have paid, with it going under 30p/litre in the intervening time. We are getting low so I did a quote..... 129p/litre! That's more than double the most we have paid and is nearly the same as road diesel. Seeing how diesel prices have risen, and given the state of the world, I was expecting an increase but the multiplier is much more than other energy sources, and I have no option but to either pay through the nose or run out. It might even be worth checking the p/kWh we pay for electricity and putting fan heaters in each room - plus we have a wood burning stove which will heat one downstairs room plus the upstairs area through overspill.