MSE News: Npower cuts gas prices by 7%

magyar

mattcanary wrote: »

Hmm, the utility companies may claim the profit margins are low on each customer. Ever heard of creative accounting? Commonly used by the well-off to get out of paying their fair share of tax.

So what, are you criticising the amount of investment made into things like power stations?

mattcanary wrote: »

Aren't the prices utility companies charge far higher in the UK than they are in most of the rest of Europe? That's because of the political parties in this country all following Thatcher dogma - the market rules. Except it rips off people. Governments are meant to be in place to make laws and change society as and when required - not to pander to the whims of big business!

Where do you get that from? Energy prices are much higher in most of Europe. This data is a little out of date (2008)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL2517431120080225

However actually that was a peak in power price, it's been fairly stable and indeed fallen since then.

mattcanary

It would be good if the link used plain English, instead of mumbo-jumbo jargon. I can't comment if the text is correct because I don;t understand the tables!

magyar

mattcanary wrote: »

It would be good if the link used plain English, instead of mumbo-jumbo jargon. I can't comment if the text is correct because I don;t understand the tables!

I agree it's a little hard to understand! I think it's saying that you have to take into consideration the average earnings of someone in that country. So if you compare the UK and Latvia, we pay about 50% more for electricity than they do, but because Latvians earn less money then - as a percentage of income - we pay comparatively less.

However if you look at Germany they pay over 50% more than we do and because they earn much the same as us, they're way way down the table.

And this is borne out by conversations I've had with German friends, who complain about how much they pay for their energy.

Viper_7

gmang wrote: »

I'm with npower and got an email from them this morning.

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Hello Mr Powell
We've dropped our standard gas prices for the average customer by around 7%*
which means our domestic gas customers will see a reduction averaging £50 on their gas bills. These cuts will take effect from 26 March 2010.
[/FONT]
All well and good, but I'm not Mr Powell![FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/FONT]

I also got the E-mail... and I have no gas supply....!

thor

magyar wrote: »

It's not quite as simple as that, because you wouldn't buy your whole volume three years out, you'd buy maybe 25% three years out, 25% one year out, 25% a month out and then the rest in the month of supply. This is a process called hedging which means that the overall energy price is 'smoothed'.

Ok lets take a longer than 3 years medium term look.
I don't have any figures but what were the general wholesale and retail prices of fuel five years ago and how do they compare to today?