Switching electricity suppliers?

greenfeld69

Hi all

Having finally woken up to the fact that I am paying too much for my electricity (I am on bottled gas), I am hoping to get some advice on switching from British Gas.

To begin with, I am on the absolute bog-standard tariff, as below:

Standard Electricity Tariff ( After 10 December 2010) Price per kilowatt hour (kWh) (excl vat) Price per kWh (incl vat)
First (180 kWh per quarter) 22.549p 23.676p
Next (Remainder) 9.590p 10.070p

I have a meter that does Economy 7 but I have never used it. My radiators are gas and I don't use electricity much at night (although the washing machine often goes on at bedtime).

My usage last year was, I think, around 5,500Kw.

A few questions:

How do you decide who to go with? The comparison sites don't seem to clearly tell me much - just save £XXX, without any explanation how or why.

The other one, is it worth going on an Economy 7 tariff? Is there a downside to it? When I put my details in for what I currently pay, do I say I am an Economy 7 customer or not? If I say no, it seems to kill the option of an Economy 7 tariff.

Any advice welcome.

dogshome

Hi greenfeld69 - Can't work out from your post if you are being billed on an ECO7 tariff or a 'Standard' meter tariff.
Do you have Day & Night meter readings listed on your bills?

If you are on ECO7the down side is that you are charged a Premium price for the units you use in the Day, and from your post you are not takinge advantage of the cheap ECO7 Night units.

As bottled gas is more expensive than mains gas, if your are on an ECO7 tariff it's probably worth using it to cook up your Hot water overnight and always running Wash m/c, Dishwash m/c & dryers overnight

greenfeld69

I am on a totally standard tariff - no EC07. If EC07 is a premium for day-time then I'll stick with standard I guess.

t0rt0ise

Usually the comparison sites will give you the unit price etc of each tariff if you click on them so you can you why you will make the savings. I use uSwitch and can see each tariff on there.