E.ON gas and electricity pricing

welshmike_2

I switched to E.ON SaveOnline 2 in August 2010 and given the likely stiff gas and electricity price rises soon am now considering switching to a fixed tariff.
My average consumption is
Electricity 2236kWh per month
Gas 2372kWh per month
I've tried two comparison sites and best results via different switchers are as follows:
http://www.winchesternw.org.uk/Simply%20Switch.png shows £1364 per year fixed tarff with EDF
http://www.winchesternw.org.uk/Energy%20helpline.png shows £1170 per year fixed tariff with British Gas
That's a large difference and I wonder why.

What do the MoneySavingsExperts team say please?

victor2

welshmike wrote: »

I switched to E.ON SaveOnline 2 in August 2010 and given the likely stiff gas and electricity price rises soon am now considering switching to a fixed tariff.
My average consumption is
Electricity 2236kWh per month
Gas 2372kWh per month
I've tried two comparison sites and best results via different switchers are as follows:
http://www.winchesternw.org.uk/Simply%20Switch.png shows £1364 per year fixed tarff with EDF
http://www.winchesternw.org.uk/Energy%20helpline.png shows £1170 per year fixed tariff with British Gas
That's a large difference and I wonder why.

What do the MoneySavingsExperts team say please?

Do you really use that much electricity per month? Not out by a factor of 10 is it?
To get decent estimates from the comparison sites, you want to put in annual kWh usage for each utility.

Edit:
Just noticed you are comparing the EDF capped tariff against the BG WebSaver one, which is not capped, so you would expect it to cost less as the rates could, and probably will, go up during the contract.

Cardew

welshmike wrote: »

I switched to E.ON SaveOnline 2 in August 2010 and given the likely stiff gas and electricity price rises soon am now considering switching to a fixed tariff.
My average consumption is
Electricity 2236kWh per month
Gas 2372kWh per month
I've tried two comparison sites and best results via different switchers are as follows:
http://www.winchesternw.org.uk/Simply%20Switch.png shows £1364 per year fixed tarff with EDF
http://www.winchesternw.org.uk/Energy%20helpline.png shows £1170 per year fixed tariff with British Gas
That's a large difference and I wonder why.

What do the MoneySavingsExperts team say please?

Annual consumption needed - you are not using 27,000kWh electric and 26,000kWh gas for £1170.

welshmike_2

Many thanks for your prompt reply.
1. I should have typed the kWh figures that I entered for price comparison as:
Electricity 234.6kWh per month or 2815.2kWh per year
Gas 2371.7kWh per month or 28460.4 per year.
2. You noticed that I had given the EDF capped tariff and the BG WebSaver one just before I saw your reply, thanks.
Simply switch shows for fixed tariff best is npower at £1,352 per year.
So no significant difference between the two comparison sites.

Welshmike, go to the back of the class :embarasse

So comparing what I'm paying now to fixed tariff I get the figures below.
Now £1,066.00
Fixed £1,352.00
Difference £286.00
% difference 26.83%

So I have to considerer whether it is worth switching to a fixed tariff or risk that variable prices do not go up by more than 26.83% in the next 2 years?

welshmike_2

Cardew wrote: »

Annual consumption needed - you are not using 27,000kWh electric and 26,000kWh gas for £1170.

Quite so :embarasse . My mistakes.

Joyful

Your gas figures are way off. You will not use the same amount every month. You look as if you have just multiplied a monthly figure. Get the correct info from your supplier. As the national average is now 16500 for gas you would be way over at 28000.

welshmike_2

Joyful wrote: »

Your gas figures are way off. You will not use the same amount every month. You look as if you have just multiplied a monthly figure. Get the correct info from your supplier. As the national average is now 16500 for gas you would be way over at 28000.

Thanks for pointing that out and I agree that 28000 is too high an estimate.
Our gas consumption was a total of 6004kWh for the cold 31 Dec 2010 to 18 Mar 2011 period. (2371.7kWh/month). However we were away for 3 of those weeks and the central heating was turned down.
It was 4581kWh for the warmer period of 27 June to 29 October. (1123.7/month)
We have not been with E.ON for 12 months so they will not have our annual consumption.
We live in a reasonably well insulated large 4 bed detached house and being retired are at home all day.
Based on the above figures our annual consumption may well be more than the national average of 16500 and closer to but less than 20000.

I've just ran 20000kWh gas per year and and 2815kWh electricity per year on comparison site energy helpline.

British Gas comes out cheapest for variable at £959 per year.
My current E.ON variable is just over £900 per year and there is a 8% discount.

EDF at £1084 per year is cheapest for fixed to 30 Sept 2012.

So there's about 21% difference between fixed and variable .
Maybe I'll risk sticking with variable.