The Future Of Gas & Elec Prices

Fortyfoot

His advice was that if you have not changed supplier, then do it now.
If you have changed then wait.
Fortyfoot

Cardew

I am on the older BG Fixed until April 30 2010 tariff that closed a little while ago and 'escaped' the latest round of price rises.

There is I suppose a possiblity that gas & electricity prices could fall if the EEC manage to sort out the 'price fixing' by the big European firms; although personally I doubt if it will be more than a token gesture.

When I decided to go for the BG 2010 fixed offer, I looked closely at the penalties involved in withdrawing from this offer - they reduce over a period of time. If prices do reduce, and I judge are likely to remain lower than I am currently paying, the penalties for withdrawing are not very large in relation to my annual bill.

If BG prices did reduce below my current tariff I would wager that they would let me change to that tariff without penalty if I said that the option was to switch to another company. Indeed if another company did seem to offer a long term better deal it would pay me to switch and simply pay the penalty.

I believe the penalties on the BG 2009 deal currently on offer are not very high and it might pay people to look at them - or indeed other fixed/capped deals available from other companies.

Cardew

QUOTE=tigger2]My dad has just gone onto the PowergenCapped tarif

This is before the inpending rise for duel fuel.

Gas
First 1143 units..Now...3.634 ........Capped 2010 ....4.339
2nd ........................ 2.053 ............................. 2.390


Elec
First 200 units ..now...10.68 First 225 capped .....16.83

2nd .........................8.38...............................8.62

As I say increase not added.[/QUOTE]

From those figures it is not possible to calculate your annual increase in percentage terms as it will depend on how much Gas and electricity you use.

For gas the increases are 19.4% for the first tier and 16.4% for the second tier.

For Electricity it is 77% for the first tier and 2.9% for the second tier.

On the face of things it would appear to be better to go for that capped tariff(unless you are a very low electricty user) than get hit for the full Powergen price increase.

Robboseven

peawack wrote:

No you were not, you were being Party political.

Certainly politicians (whatever the party) must take a lot of the blame for the current energy situation. When politicians decided to embark on a program of building gas fired power stations because we had lots of gas in the North Sea, they must have known how long it was likely to last. I can remember news reports from the 70's saying the gas would last 30 - 40 years.

Sooner or later we would need to import gas again. Thanks to the demise of communism in Easter Europe we can now buy gas and oil from Russia. If they hadn't kicked out communism we would really be in a mess (and so would Chelsea probably).

We now have a situation where Russia controls a lot of the energy needs of the rest of Europe. They can (and have) cut the supply if they want.

Add to that the fact that the German and French companies who wholesale the gas and sell it on to us are rigging the market to keep prices high and you soon realise that the situation is not going to reverse. High energy prices are a fact of life and the UK's inability to address the issue means the government is now considering nuclear power again. Mad

I'm no conspiracy theorist but is it coincidence that the predicted "hardest winter for 30 years" hasn't happened but the largest energy increases ever has? Just a thought.

Ella_Bella_2

Hi All

Reading the papers today it looks like gas prices are rising on 10th March. I've looked at the websites you've suggested to get a prices comparison etc and I want to switch suppliers. Is it best to do it now or after 10th March? Don't want to switch and then find the company I've switched to is raising their prices.

And advise??

Ella

lisyloo

Hi Ella,

Have you switched before?

If you have switched before then the general advice is to wait as they are all raising prices right now so you won't et a clear picture.
If you haven't switched and are with the incumbent suppliers then you should switch as there aregood savings to be amde whichever one you choose.

Cardew

Ella_Bella wrote:

Hi All

Reading the papers today it looks like gas prices are rising on 10th March. I've looked at the websites you've suggested to get a prices comparison etc and I want to switch suppliers. Is it best to do it now or after 10th March? Don't want to switch and then find the company I've switched to is raising their prices.

And advise??

Ella

I don't think anyone can advise you with any certainty.

The problem is that we can no longer rely on an annual 'round 'of pay rises from all the companies - I think Powergen have raised their prices 5 times in just over 2 years.

Some companies seem to delay their price rises as a tactic to persuade people to switch to them; and when they have got extra customers - up go their prices.

If you look back through this forum you will see that no company has consistently provided the best tariff.