Gas and Elec Standing Charge

Rubber_Duck_4

I have recently changed my scottish power to an online service. There were two options

1 Online Energy

and

2 Online Energy (no standing charge)

I went for option 2. Can anyone tell me if this was the right decision or should I try and get it changed to option 1.

Any advice appreciated

Wig

Which one was cheaper for you?

oldwiring

How much gas and electricity do you use in a year in kWh, and which electricity region are you in? If I can I'll run some calcs, being an idle pensioner.

Cardew

For the vast majority of customers it makes no difference.

If you elect for no standing charge you pay extra on the first units you use each quarter - often 225 kWh for electricity and 1143 kWh for gas.

The additional charge on these units usually comes to the same amount as the standing charge.

The only time you would be better off with no standing charge is if you do not use all the 'extra charge' units in a quarter; however most people do use them all.

oldwiring

I did a goal-seek calculation in Excel for NE post code of the sc and nsc tariffs.
For electricity sc is dearer up to 4522 kWH/year. For gas the figure is 899kWh..

Strangely a pattern sonn emerges that nsc gas is dearer by 48p/year and nsc electric by 7p/year. But this probably is due to roundings in the prices quoted in the comparison site used, and so not significant.