Bulk LPG - Cheapest suppliers / supply route?

Williambanjo

Hey all,

Thought this may add to the discussion.

With shell since sept 2009 (when moved into property) initial deal .35ppl
4ppl rise at start of november (12 months to the day...) now another 7ppl increase.

After reading this thread i will be contacting shell and pointing out that they have brokenthe contract and that wewill be serving notice and changing supplier. I will suggest to them that we will stay with them if they reissue agreement at .35ppl
I'll keep you all posted with how we get on.

Wb

LittleVermin

Williambanjo wrote: »

<snip>
After reading this thread i will be contacting shell and pointing out that they have brokenthe contract and that wewill be serving notice and changing supplier. I will suggest to them that we will stay with them if they reissue agreement at .35ppl
<snip>

I suggest people get quotes from other potential suppliers for their area* before they give their present supplier notice for breaking the contract - and then invite them to resupply with a massive reduction .... At the very least you have some figures in your head if your present supplier offers a compromise. Needless to say alternative suppliers will need to provide ** not only an acceptable initial price (guaranteed for 1 or two fills, or for x months) and an acceptable maximum rate of rise *** and a reasonable tank rental (i.e. ~£60 p.a.). "Loyalty bonus", "free gas" ... all sound good but probably sound better than they really are if each tankful of LPG costs you several hundred quid!

I'm with ExtraFuel - who post a price each month, valid for the whole of that month and for all their customers no matter where. December's price is 52.01 ppl. I paid them 36.03 ppl in June (beginning of contract). http://www.extrafuel.co.uk/

* put your postcode in the box at http://www.uklpg.org/supplier-search/

** "Suppliers are obliged to quote you prices for LPG over the telephone" (quote from http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/EnergySupplyandPost/energysupply/563247/LPG )

*** see HateLPG's post http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=39042306&postcount=404

Most of the above either has been written before or is not rocket science - so apologies for teaching g'ma to suck eggs.

DAVID.T_3

HateLPG wrote: »

Just as an observation and food for thought - I thought I'd have a look at the prices of Automotive LPG. I know it's a completely different animal, so direct comparison is misleading, but I looked at the figures out of curiosity, and I thought I'd share them.

According to http://www.petrolprices.com, this week the pump price for automotive LPG nationally ranges from 59.9ppl to 75.9ppl, with an average pump price of 66.0ppl

Now, the prices that people quote on here tend to be ex-VAT (that is what the suppliers always quote), and there is 17.5% VAT payable on Road Fuel (not the 5% payable on domestic energy), so that gives us an ex-VAT price for automotive LPG of 50.98ppl - 64.60ppl (average 56.17ppl);

But before he sticks his VAT on, the Chancellor has already whacked a massive 31.95p Fuel Duty on every litre of your best LPG (http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1085465445&type=RESOURCES), so that gives us an Ex-VAT, Ex-Duty LPG pump price (i.e. delivered to point of sale, and including any profit margin (or loss)) for the retailer, of: 19.03ppl - 32.65ppl (average 24.22ppl)

Now I know it's not possible to make a direct comparison.
I know it's a very different market. I know that some stations such as the large Supermarkets sell fuel on the tiniest margin possible - often even as a loss leader to entice people in. I also know the delivery costs to the station will almost certainly be a bit less than the delivery costs to the domestic consumer.

But I also know that it is fundamentally the same product. And despite the obvious differences, I still think those figures tell a story........

All very interesting but your calculations are wrong

DUTY ON LPG ROAD FUEL IS NOT 31.95 PER LTR!!!!! its half that.

LittleVermin

DAVID.T wrote: »

All very interesting but your calculations are wrong

DUTY ON LPG ROAD FUEL IS NOT 31.95 PER LTR!!!!! its half that.

David,

I'm sure HateLPG appreciates your first 3 words - but I think many of us would appreciate you letting us know what the duty is - precisely. Is it precisely half of 31.95? i.e. 15.975? On HMRC and associated sites (e.g. Deloitte's) the duty is given in pence per kilogram. Somewhere - no doubt - I could find the kg/l conversion in use in the industry (I know the actual figure is temperature dependant so will vary). If you will tell us the current figure for duty in pence per litre (i.e. since the 1st October rise) I expect HateLPG will be willing to rework his calculation for everyone's benefit - and interest. None of us wants errors of fact in posts!

It's very useful having people in the LPG industry contributing to this forum (you'll see that I've clicked the thanks button under several of your posts - including the one (#312, this thread) where you corrected the statement from "LPG employee" that LPG tankers cost a whopping £500,000 rather than, at most, £150,000. LPG employee's company obviously buys the diamond-encrusted ones from Damien Hirst & Co ... and passes the costs on to the users).

cheers,
John

DAVID.T_3

LittleVermin wrote: »

David,

I'm sure HateLPG appreciates your first 3 words - but I think many of us would appreciate you letting us know what the duty is - precisely. Is it precisely half of 31.95? i.e. 15.975? On HMRC and associated sites (e.g. Deloitte's) the duty is given in pence per kilogram. Somewhere - no doubt - I could find the kg/l conversion in use in the industry (I know the actual figure is temperature dependant so will vary). If you will tell us the current figure for duty in pence per litre (i.e. since the 1st October rise) I expect HateLPG will be willing to rework his calculation for everyone's benefit - and interest. None of us wants errors of fact in posts!

It's very useful having people in the LPG industry contributing to this forum (you'll see that I've clicked the thanks button under several of your posts - including the one where you corrected the statement from "LPG employee" that LPG tankers cost a whopping £500,000 rather than, at most, £150,000. LPG employee's company obviously buys the diamond-encrusted ones from Damien Hirst & Co ... and passes the costs on to the users).

cheers,
John

he he, I fancy a diamond encrusted one, sorry should have said, it is exacty half 15.97p per ltr plus 17.5% vat on top

DrMekon

Just found this thread after searching for info online for about a year! Our CH and water is heated by LPG, but we've got 4 x 47kg cylinders rather than a bulk tank. We've been with Calor, and they've been sending us "price is going up" letters. We barely use a cylinder for 6 months of a year, so when I rang up and found they wanted £120 for 2 x 47kg, I rang flogas who offered the same for £93, but couldn't deliver quickly. I rang Calor back and they immediately matched it without question! I suspect I need to get a bulk tank installed if I am going to save any money. Can anyone point me to advice on getting a good installation / rental deal?

LittleVermin

DrMekon wrote: »

Just found this thread after searching for info online for about a year! Our CH and water is heated by LPG, but we've got 4 x 47kg cylinders rather than a bulk tank. We've been with Calor, and they've been sending us "price is going up" letters. We barely use a cylinder for 6 months of a year, so when I rang up and found they wanted £120 for 2 x 47kg, I rang flogas who offered the same for £93, but couldn't deliver quickly. I rang Calor back and they immediately matched it without question! I suspect I need to get a bulk tank installed if I am going to save any money. Can anyone point me to advice on getting a good installation / rental deal?

Welcome to the BULK LPG forum!

1. "if I am going to save any money". Some people might suggest you go for ASHP or GSHP (see separate threads) if you intend to stay long in your house. Relative heating costs can be found (and adjusted for current prices) at http://www.nottenergy.com/energy-costs-comparison3

2. "good installation / rental deal". See my post #413 for finding potential suppliers.

I'd first get one of the potential suppliers out to advise on legal options for positioning your bulk tank (these LPG threads record people with problems with wrongly sited tanks - maybe as a result of changes in regs). Calor have plans on: http://www.calor.co.uk/heating/domestic-central-heating/storage-options/single-bulk-tank-supply

People with their own tanks say they save a lot of money - but they have all bought second-hand tanks off their previous supplier. Cost of a new tank??

Whichever route you take, rent or own, you will need to put in the hard-standing, and get a registered engineer to put in the pipework from tank to house.

Good deals? Maybe read through dozens of earlier posts in this thread. Some companies' names appear more frequently in horror stories - in fact both the companies you mention are stars in this regard! Calor at least offers a maximum rate of rise in its contracts - but then seems very often to forget this (someone went through old invoices and got around £1k refunded). Many people would recommend a local supplier - but it will be taken over by a major in a few years' time, probably!

3. Maybe think whether tieing your property into bulk LPG will improve saleability, or not, when you want to move. And whether some other technology might be better.

Good luck!

HateLPG

DAVID.T wrote: »

All very interesting but your calculations are wrong

DUTY ON LPG ROAD FUEL IS NOT 31.95 PER LTR!!!!! its half that.

Thank you for that David, and my apologies to all - having carefully checked that the table quoted ppl, I then managed to completely miss the (£ per kg) entry on the row in question!

Figures I have found for LPG density are about 0.5 to 0.51 kg/l, so, to re-calculate (using 0.5kg/l for simplicity):

But before he sticks his VAT on, the Chancellor has already whacked 15.98p Fuel Duty on every litre of your best LPG (http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg...type=RESOURCES), so that gives us an Ex-VAT, Ex-Duty LPG pump price (i.e. delivered to point of sale, and including any profit margin (or loss)) for the retailer, of: 35.01ppl - 48.63ppl (average 40.12ppl)

Which I guess is broadly in line with what we are seeing in the domestic LPG market!

HateLPG

DrMekon wrote: »

I suspect I need to get a bulk tank installed if I am going to save any money. Can anyone point me to advice on getting a good installation / rental deal?

Further to LittleVermin's post (all good stuff), the other thing to consider and investigate is what grants or other assistance you might get if you decide to go down the Ground or Air Source Heat Pump (GSHP/ASHP) route. I can't give any specifics here - you'd have to search around - but I believe that such grants are available in some areas.

There is also the Government-funded Renewable Heat Incentive scheme, due for launch next year (currently scheduled for June 2011, I believe), which is a Government funded scheme (£860m ?) to fund installation of "Green" heating systems. In Scotland, grants are available under the Scottish Community and Household Renewables Initiative.

I briefly looked into GSHP a few years ago when we had to change our boiler, but at that time, I couldn't find anyone in our area who could give me confidence that they really knew what they were doing and I was concerned that the geography of our property could cause problems. But that was then and things have moved on a LOT since then.

Without question, I will be looking at those technologies for heating and hot water as soon as our current boiler nears the end of its serviceable life (if not sooner, if LPG prices continue to rise as they are at present).

As I have posted elsewhere, I will retain my underground tank once that happens, a) to avoid the hassle of having it dug up and removed; b) to avoid uplift charges; c) because LPG is THE best thing to use for cooking! And I reckon one fill of a 2000l tank would last a good few years just for cooking

DrMekon

Ah - so there is 183.6 litres in 2 x4 47kg cylinders, so I am paying 50.5ppl in cylinders. Sounds like I might not save money switching to a tank.

Re. other systems, our boiler has lots of life left in it. My wife currently has it in her head that we need a wood burning stove, so I suspect I'll need to spend some time on here to figure out whether that will be worthwhile.

I really am astonished at the barefaced cheek of Calor jacking the price up so blatantly. Having two young kids and a busy job makes it hard to find space to shop around, but finding I could save £30 a month (we can do 2 cylinders a month when it's cold) from just a phone call means I'll be calling around every month to keep the price down.