Southern Electric iPlan

djdust

Hi all

A couple of weeks ago, I made the decision to switch from Southern Electric to Scottish Power as they offered a capped deal until 2013 of the following:

ELECTRIC
20.932p (first 225 kw/h per quarter), then 10.899p for the rest.

GAS
7.504p (first 670 kw/h per quarter), then 2.980 for the rest.

It seemed like a pretty good deal. I've just had Southern Electric calling up trying to retain my custom and they've recommended me their iPlan package which they calculated would be roughly as follows (can't remember the exact figures they gave me but they were something like this...)

ELECTRIC
12.000p (all kw/h per quarter)

GAS
3.120p (all kw/h per quarter)

Now, that seems pretty good as, from what I can see, even if prices were to nigh-on *double* in the next 2 years, I'd still always be paying less up front for the "first" load of kw/h that Scottish Power is quoting.

Am I right, or am I missing something important? Can anyone help the newbie here? :rotfl:

cheers

Darren

eurmalian

You want to check how much you're using in a quarter to see how worthwile it is. To give you an idea, the average for gas is arround 4000kWh per quarter and for electric it's roughly 900 kWh a quarter.

It basically means that unless you're a very low user, the 'for the rest' price is far more important than the initial one as you'll be paying for 75%+ of your anergy at that price. With that, the Southern Electric deal becomes a lot less impressive...

djdust

The advisor told me that I was using an average of:

• 820 kw/h/quarter for Electricity
• 1040 kw/h/quarter for Gas

I know that my Gas usage is going to go down anyway as I've just had a new boiler installed that should guzzle up considerably less gas!!

Thoughts?

eurmalian

In that case it's going to be cheaper for sure just now. You just need to guess at how much any price rises are likely to be and decide if it's good in the long term.

You're a really low gas user already. If a new boiler knocks much off of that then you're going to be doing incredibly well!

ivorwallison

the southern electric iplan tariff standard is 2p less than the standard rate - for me anyway and the only down side is the return to a standing charge at 13p daily. The up side - despite what some say here - I can manage my daily use of electricity in REAL TIME all most totally acurately and the moniter tells me in money terms daily/weekly/monthly usage. I have already changed my usage habits and the monitor is still in its learning phase - week from 12midnight sunday to midnight sunday i.e.7 days - the tools are excellent and the nice thing is the software is on the SSE site so I only download an uploader. Great system - beats e.ons by a country mile where the software is crap and on ones pc - p.s. on dual fuel plans the standing charge is with gas as well but at about 29p/daily for gas, as well as the 13p for elec.