Electricity DD too high... thoughts?

Maharishi

Hello Forum,

Straight off the bat I want to make it clear that this is NOT a moan-at-a-utility-supplier post. A few months ago when our deal with nPower ended, (spit), a search threw up a new (to me) company called OVO. I decided to switch to them even though I knew nothing about them. I did, however, do a fair amount of Googling first. Just for assurance...

So the changeover happens and all goes smoothly. Our DD was based on the previous year's usage that I provided during the application; £85 p.c.m. Since that date, with the weather being so crap and the garden yield being almost nil, I have turned off two chest freezers. This in turn has dropped our usage down considerably to between £56 - £60 per month and we currently stand in credit over £200.

This in itself is not a massive problem except that I do not anticipate turning these units on again until next autumn at the earliest. Added to that, our winter usage does not go up much. We are both at home all day as missus is retired and I work from home. So, apart from a few hours more lightbulb and the odd burst from the oil boiler when it is arctic, that's about it.

The OVO site, which I have to say is the best I have used to date for electricity account management, has a 'Manage Your Direct Debit' menu whereby it 'looks' at your past record and 'offers' you a new figure based on this data. I did that and it said £74, a reduction of £11. I accepted that but our balance is still going to increase, albeit more slowly than before.

So, what do I do? Leave it alone knowing that eventually, with price hikes, that this will get eroded and in the meantime collect the 3% interest on the positive balance or contact them and get it down lower to use the surplus up faster?

All thoughts welcome and well done OVO. Very good so far (since March 2012), and would recommend.