Rip of Britain

JSR

Are you saying the people of the Netherlands are paying for fresh air?

No they pay per kWh.

Who, other than Transco, can validate the information to be correct?

Ofgem.

But then, even though your meter measures correctly out 100 cubic feet, its conversion to kWh’s is measured differently and varyingly from supplier to supplier on a daily bases

It doesn't vary by supplier. The supplier is told what value to use and all suppliers are given the same value for the same area.

If the CV is lower your boiler will use more cubic feet of gas to generate the same heat that is why the conversion to kWh is done. You only pay for the useful energy you can extract from the gas not the fresh air.

the number of kWh you pay for on the higher rate is increased as the weather gets colder and you need the heating more?

This is nothing to do with CV but doesn't matter any more as Ofgem have banned these kinds of tariffs.

sheffield_lad

It's nice to see the penny finally dropping with UK energy. It's not rip off Britain. As the link suggests we are actually cheaper than many other European countries for both gas & electric. The reason for the high cost of fuel is 3 part.
1, we now live in a world where every man & his dog want cheap fuel half the population of India have no mains electricity. (how long for?)

2, we no longer have our own reserves

3, we pay a subsidy on carbon fuels.

Just blaming the energy firms or lack of regulation is not looking at the bigger picture which suggests we need to start getting our act together on both providing cheap fuel (nuclear, gas), and insulating properties as we have some of the poorest housing stock in Europe.

Cardew

John.R wrote: »

using the math;
> 500 cubic feet multiplied by 2.83 multiplied by 33.320 multiplied by 1.022640 divided by 3.6 multiplied by 5p equals £669.66

Actually using your figures above for 500 cubic feet I would only pay £6.70 and everyone else in UK would pay roughly the same as myself.

The first part of the conversion calculation is to convert a cubic foot into a cubic metre so you would multiply your reading by 2.83 - from here on it's the same calculation for both types of meters, old and new.

Mmm! now when I went to school a metre was over 3 times as big as a foot(3.281 to be more precise). So 3.281 cubed would be 35.32. Doesn't that mean that to convert cubic feet into cubic metres you would need to divide by 35.2 not multiply by 2.83?

Of course most of us know the answer, but let us make it a riddle for the OP;)

keystone

Cardew wrote: »

Of course most of us know the answer, but let us make it a riddle for the OP;)

:rotfl:. I admire your (and others) fortitude in reading it. Actually I started to get bored halfway down the post and most definitely swtched off when he said Transco - which name, as everyone should know, hasn't existed for 7½ years. Frankly this simple error led me to seriously doubt the veracity of the rest of the data in the post. So I gave up. Sorry OP - you blew it.

Cheers

Cardew

John.R wrote: »

The Gross calorific value of natural gas by source of production (most recent) by country; United Kingdom 39.710 and in the Netherlands 33.320



There are too many complexities and variations to account for and no wonder the Netherlands pay a little more € per kWh for there Natural Gas when the calorific value is much less.

A kWh is a kWh! and no matter where you are in the world it is equal to 3.6 megajoules.

Do you really not appreciate that the whole point of using the calorific value in the calculation used to convert cubic metres of gas to kWh is to ensure that a kWh is, err, a kWh.

You are suggesting that a Dutch kWh contains more/less energy than a British kWh; and presumably therefore a kWh in Texas is huge;)

The best way of looking at the situation is to compare cheap supermarket blackcurrant squash with, say, Ribena*. To get the same strength of diluted drink you need to use less Ribena than the supermarket squash.

* I should declare an interest, I hold shares in the company that makes Ribena!

zerog

The answer is that there is really no way of knowing whether the calorific values are measured and audited properly unless that is your actual job. If you are so concerned about that (to the exclusion of everything else) then you had better set up your own country where you control the gas suppliers.

Ken68

Well spotted John, even if only £2, a fiddle is a fiddle in whatever country.
Times 20 million accounts. Worth going into.

Cardew

John.R wrote: »

Gas however is so complex, as the number of kWh's per month you pay at the higher rate goes up as the weather gets colder and, depending on supplier, jumps from 45 kWh's in June to 890 kWh's in November. So if your tariff is, for instance, higher rate 7.227p per kWh and 3.634p for the lower; a bill for 800kWh's in June would cost you £30.69 and in November would cost you £57.82 on the same tariff.


John

The only supplier who has used this method of varying the Tier1 allocation for gas over the year is NPower. It is called 'seasonal weighting' or 'sculpting'. All others on the tier system of charging, use a pro-rata daily allocation So if they charge for say 2,800kWh pa on Tier 1, for each day of the bill you will be charged for 7.67kWh at the higher Tier 1 rate, regardless of the bill covering January or July.

If you want to read several thousand posts on Npower's tariffs, search for 'sculpting'.

To turn to your more general point about companies fraudulently making money from using the incorrect calorific value.

As said above the CV is independently set and independently audited and is a parameter in the billing algorithm. To do as you suggest there would have to be a criminal conspiracy within a company to achieve that aim. Someone in management would have to arrange for the billing algorithm to be altered to accomodate the altered CV.

It would be a pretty stupid computer programmer to do this and risk almost certainly a long jail sentence. Especially as the 'evidence' in the shape of millions of bills would always be available as evidence years after the act.

If the fraud wasn't discovered during routine audit, you can bet your bottom dollar a disgruntled employee would become a whistle blower.

DragonQ

Cardew wrote: »

All others on the tier system of charging, use a pro-rata daily allocation So if they charge for say 2,800kWh pa on Tier 1, for each day of the bill you will be charged for 7.67kWh at the higher Tier 1 rate, regardless of the bill covering January or July.

Which has the slight advantage of being cheaper for direct debit payers (if you don't use the full "tier 1" allowance in any given month, which is likely in the summer).

Ken68

That is what the OP is saying, Cardew, the CV is ,maybe, not independent.The algorithm does what it's told.
And why should it be a disgruntled employee who blows the whistle, and not an employee who puts truth before wrongdoing.
Incidentally there are other indices under investigation, maybe the CV.