British Gas -Gas Usage Calculations

MikeM

I am sure that this has been asked before on this forum but can someone please explain or point me to how the BG Standard Gas tariff works ?

From what I understand:

90 day quarters
First 670 kwh at higher rate, rest at lower rate

So 670kwh x 4 quarters = 2680 kwh over 365 days = 7.342kwh per day at higher rate ?

Wouldn't it would be strange if you went to the petrol station and they said £1.50 per litre for the first 10 litres and then £1.00 per litre for the rest ?

Cardew

The 2,680kWh Tier 1 or primary units are the way most companies collect their Standing Charge - this is the charge for bringing the gas to your property, meter readers and running the accounts etc.

It used to be a daily standing charge of xx pence - and some tariffs still have that charging structure.

MikeM

But why don't they just call it a 'standing charge' ? Then it would be easier to compare the actual cost of the energy.

I had great diificulty finding the tariffs on the British Gas web site but that should be no surprise to anyone !

Cardew

Why would it be easier to compare?

If Company A had a high daily charge, and a lower unit(kWh) charge, you would still have to calculate if that was better for you than Company B with a lower daily charge and a higher unit charge.

The only company that doesn't have a standing charge of any kind is Ebico - they are pretty competitive for gas unless you are a very high user.

Gerrard_8_lfc

British Gas / Scottish gas dont charge standing charges.. Im the first to admit our top tier in most regions is one of the highest. so saying why dont we charge standing charge wel because users will benefit looking at Scottish Hydro Tariff 14.000 p a KWH against out 23.500 sounds excellent but add the 14.00 p a day on it becomes less attractive.

With a Two tier system it allows people who use a lot of gas and elec drop to lower tiers faster. depending on supplier depends on how fast you drop e.g BG elec 125 KWH a quarter against e.g. eon there boundary is 225 kwh of elec

Cardew

Gerrard_8_lfc wrote: »

British Gas / Scottish gas dont charge standing charges.. Im the first to admit our top tier in most regions is one of the highest. so saying why dont we charge standing charge wel because users will benefit looking at Scottish Hydro Tariff 14.000 p a KWH against out 23.500 sounds excellent but add the 14.00 p a day on it becomes less attractive.

With a Two tier system it allows people who use a lot of gas and elec drop to lower tiers faster. depending on supplier depends on how fast you drop e.g BG elec 125 KWH a quarter against e.g. eon there boundary is 225 kwh of elec

BG do have a Standing Charge. It is collected by charging extra on the first tier instead of a daily charge as they used to have 10 years ago.

BG used to charge extra(first tier) for 225kWh a quarter for electricity, however they reduced it to 125kWh but increased the price of the tier 1 units to raise the same amount for their standing charge.

e.g. If they charge an extra, say 4p for each of the 225kWh units, the standing charge is £9 a quarter. To raise the same £9 when they dropped the number of Tier 1 units to 125 a quarter, they charge an extra 7.2p for each of those units.

Under the old daily charge system they would have charged 10p a day.

Either way they still have a daily charge.

They did exactly the same with their gas. It used to be 1,143 tier 1 units a quarter; they dropped this to 670 units but raised the price of the tier 1 units to compensate.