Standing charge comparison

molerat wrote: »

Obviously dreamed up by someone with a poor grasp of numbers.

Why not just say "Daily mail" and be done with it?



Darren:rotfl:

redux wrote: »

I've decided to go for the low standing charge high unit charge for the summer, then look at high standing charge with cheaper units for the winter.

This is the kind of issue I have with the comparison sites - most of my gas consumption is in three or four months of the year, with a good proportion of that in only two months.

The comparison sites seem to spread the annual consumption over the whole year, and crucially, assume you'll stay with the same supplier for the whole year.

Because my consumption is so low I get a zero SC tariff coming up as the cheapest option, when in reality the very cheapest option would involve switching to a lower unit rate tariff at some point late autumn, and then switching back again in the spring. I'm not sure how happy the energy companies would be if lots of people were advised by comparison sites to switch in that way.

One of the very few benefits of smart meters is that they could be used to build up a profile of household energy use to identify more complex switching patterns than the current comparison sites are able to. I know my profile because I regularly read my meters and add the data to my model, but few people have the time or interest required to do that. Smart metering makes it feasible for mass use.

So the switching sites of the future could perhaps tell you to use supplier A for electricity, supplier B for gas until October, and then switch to supplier C for gas and electric from October until April. Or maybe just cut out the human being altogether and allow the smart meter to pick the energy supplier for the next week based on its own predictions and calculations

redux wrote: »

If the same spread of tariffs continues, this might save £60 to £80 a year.

You'll be excluding any tariffs that have exit fees though & probably also exclude getting any cashback.

It's a pity none of the comparison sites allow you to enter a +% and -% and give those in the results as well, so you can see what will happen for all the results if you manage to reduce your usage or what happens if it increases it. Sometimes there will be a couple of results at the top of the list that are identical/very close and one is likely better for increases and the other better for decreases.

It's not ever so hard to try out a comparison site with a low, medium or high consumption say 8,000 kwh, 12,000kwh or 16,000kwh (or any other number that you care to try). You can do the same for leccy as well.

I've thought about swapping about, summer & winter but the savings wouldn't really make the hassle worth it. I've got better things to do with my time.

The problem is with widely varying standard charge and unit prices you are still forced to guess at what your likely usage might be to determine which tariff is cheaper. And you might guess wrongly or the weather over winter be unusually warm or cold, effecting your usage and hence whether you are on the best tariff. So we have the TCR which attempts to generate a single price based on average usage, but it's a fudge at best.

Really standing charges should be fixed (they are supposed to be about recovering "fixed costs") or abolished so that then there is only a single price to compare (the unit price).