British Gas - Free Electricity

tony6403

My daughter has received an offer from British Gas to get free electricity on Saturdays.
Surely there has to be a catch ??

2010

tony6403 wrote: »

My daughter has received an offer from British Gas to get free electricity on Saturdays.
Surely there has to be a catch ??

Yes the catch is you have to go to B Gas probably the worse and dearest energy supplier in the UK.

spiro

This is something BG do in the USA and they are considering here in the future. They reason is totry and smooth out energy useage because the big spikes are what means we need more generation. You will probably pay slight more for the rest of the week. Just depends how much you can use on a Saturday to balance that out. If you do several loads of washing and tumble drying a week and could do it all in 24hrs on a Saturday then it may be worth it. Without details of the tariff its difficult to tell, its really just a different variant of E7.

macman

This must involve a smart meter install-how else can they know the consumption Fri midnight to Sat midnight?

Joyful

British Gas are considering letting people with smart meters have free electricity on a Saturday next year. I believe this has been trialled with a small number of customers already. You will not be able to ask for a smart meter but you can register interest in one on the British Gas website ( if you are a BG customer).

I love my smart meters and although some people have reservations I would recommend them everytime. I know many people (including me) who struggle to predict gas bills but with the smart meter I can tell daily how much I am using. I know (after looking at it just know) that my bill for the last 28 days is £8. This comes in really useful in the winter. I no longer get any surprises. It will be a bonus to get a day free of electric on top of this but I will wait and see if there are any conditions first as I am quite a low user of electricity.

2010

Joyful wrote: »

I love my smart meters and although some people have reservations I would recommend them every time.

You won`t be saying that once they`ve gathered all the info about your usage and start charging you more for your peak times.
Which is the other side of the coin to "free" electricity on Saturdays.

angelsmomma

I don't struggle to predict my usage.

I read my meters every monday morning, it is a simple process. In fact my 12 year old reads them now and we work out our weeks usage together.

Its not a bonus to get a day free if they charge more for the other 6 days, there's no such thing as a free lunch, this is just another way of getting more customers to sign up thinking they are getting something free.

Joyful

Currently there has been no indication they would charge extra for the other days although I am sure in the future all the suppliers will do this to try and change energy use behaviour. I personally would not mind different charges at peak times of the day and lower.

I have now had a smart meter coming up for 2 years. I have no reservations at all about BG knowing when I use peak times but as my energy consumption for both gas and electric have dropped since having them installed I still see them as a good thing.

macman

Whether it is a good deal depends of course on what they charge you for all the other days of the week.
It's the usual smoke and mirrors. What matters is your annual spend, nothing else.

mum2kathryn

The free electricity is only from 9am to 5pm on a Saturday an only until the end of December 2014. I haven't been able to find any info on the tariffs yet though.

mum2kathryn

Have to say I am quite tempted by Smart meters, if only so the meter reader wont have a jip at me for not being able to get to the meter at the back of my very full understairs cupboard...