How much have prices changed in the last 5 years?

1981trouble

Apoligies if I have missed this somewhere but I am reeally struggling to work out what gas/elec prices were 5 years ago (2008).

To explain our situation, we lived in the house in 2008 and were paying £35 pcm on gas and the same on elec all year long and it about matched usage. We moved out and rented it out for a while, tenants had prepayment meters put in and didn't use boiler regularly etc.

Moved back in in 2012, and now spending £130pcm on the gas/elec bill pcm. Usage for this last 12 months is looking at 22000kwh for gas and 6000 for elec but I cannot find my records for 2008to compare usage.

I suspect the boiler needs replacing, it is a cheap boiler and 10 yrs old which has had a rough few years but I want to make sure that the usage and efficiency is very different rather than pay out for the boiler and then find it is actually the gas prices which have changed this much if that makes sense.

Can anyoine direct me to historic gas prices (edf in 2008, I was quite on the button so it will have been one of the cheapest online tarrifs available at the time) to work out usage?

Thanks in advance

(btw, it is 3 bed terrace so not a huge house to heat so I think it is likely boiler!!!_

rogerblack

A boiler is extremely unlikely to fail in a way so as to multiply bills significantly.
Any faults that do that are likely to result in explosions, or fire shooting out the exhaust.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/




As you can see - spring 2008 was unusually warm.
Spring 2013 was unusually cold.
Gas has gone up around 50% or so, at least.
If you had had a fix from 2007, then it could be considerably more than 50%.

silverwhistle

Rooger, coooeee, what about figures for 2006?

Only joking; I'm in a similar situation to the OP, but at least found my final leccy bill from when I left. Mine is also a 3-bed terrace but I was using just less than 6 units a day of leccy when I left (for a winter quarter), so I find the OP's quite high. The gas bill I can't find..

When I move back I'll go on to pay on bill ,and track my usage daily; I really don't trust the energy companies or their algorithms, and I used to work for one!

1981trouble

Just thought I'd update this a bit as I have found some figures.

In 2008 I think we were on edf online v5

For gas - we used 14000kwh in 2008. Compared the cost price for this years usage on 2008 prices vs 2013 and there is only £1 in it so it seems the overall gas price hasn't changed that much (2008 was split tariff, currently on one flat tariff).
So we have used 8000 more kwh this year - ouch, I know it has been much colder this winter but is it 8000kwh more colder?
Has anyone compared usage over the last few years to see how much more they have used this year?


Elec - prices have gone up Usage is pretty much identical but prices have gone from £420pa to £720pa for 6000kwh of usage.

2008 edf online v5 tariff was (found this off a post by someone on here in 2008 not from edf so can only assume it is correct not confirmed):
gas - 3.3663p per first 1465 per quarter and then 2.477 after
elec - 9.754p per first 225kwh per quarter and then 6.164p after

Cuurent edf blue+
gas - 0.0369 per kwh plus daily standing order of 0.263
elec - 0.1218p per kwh plus 0.109 daily standing order

rogerblack

1981trouble wrote: »

So we have used 8000 more kwh this year - ouch, I know it has been much colder this winter but is it 8000kwh more colder?r

Where in the country are you?
Has the occupancy pattern in the house been exactly the same?
Heating on for same hours, ...
No new occupants?

1981trouble

East midlands.
Had 2nd child last summer so been at home on maternity leave but 2008 was also a mat leave year to compare to. Heating was generally on 2hrs am and 5-6hrs evening. There was some topping up of heating but only in the very long cold snaps.

matelodave

Cant tell you what it was in 2008 but I've been logging our monthly electricity use for the last three years and July-July 2010/2011 we used 8048 kw/hr, 2011/2012 it was 7955 and 2012/2013 we will use about 9000kw/h about 12% more

We are all electric and use a heatpump for heating and it's been noticeable how significantly colder and more prolonged this winter has been - the heatpump is quite sensitive to temperature changes

rogerblack

I think most of this can be explained by just the temperature, looking at the map.
The average heating demand of the UK is about 10C.
That is - 10C over average is about right - over the heating months.

3C colder 'spring' - between the two years would pretty much increase bills by a third.
This would account for 5000 or so kWh, without going into more depth.

DirectDebacle

Historical energy price updates can be found here. Tariff archive (scroll to bottom of page) goes back to 2006, comprehensive but probably not a complete list.