Huge electricity bill with smart meter

adindas

consultant31 wrote: »

You do pay considerably more per unit on a pre-paid meter I believe.

I have read somewhere this has been made sort of illegal recently to charge people based on the Method they pay but could not find the source of this info.

Someone who knows about this, Could you please shed the light ???

Thanks

MeterMan

consultant31 wrote: »

You do pay considerably more per unit on a pre-paid meter I believe.

'considerably more' is wrong, the difference in electric cost is around 3ppkwh and the difference in gas is around .2ppkwh more.

You can view this information on the prepay meters

Bark01

The issue between pre-pay and credit isn't a pricing difference - credit and pre-pay on the same tariff are normally the same price with DD being cheaper.

The issue is the cheap tariffs are only available for credit/DD as there is a physical limit on the number of prepay tariffs that can be in the market at any given time due to the third party prepay infrastructure.

Once we move to a smart world and in home prepay becomes the norm then this limitation goes away as you can deal direct with the supplier rather than the companies who run the current infrastructure. PPM should then also (in theory) become cheaper than cash/cheque.

adindas

Bark01 wrote: »

The issue between pre-pay and credit isn't a pricing difference - credit and pre-pay on the same tariff are normally the same price with DD being cheaper.

The issue is the cheap tariffs are only available for credit/DD as there is a physical limit on the number of prepay tariffs that can be in the market at any given time due to the third party prepay infrastructure.

Once we move to a smart world and in home prepay becomes the norm then this limitation goes away as you can deal direct with the supplier rather than the companies who run the current infrastructure. PPM should then also (in theory) become cheaper than cash/cheque.

Could you elaborate more about this ??
What is the difference it will make if for instance I would be paying using DD instead of the current pre-paid meter ??

thanks

Bark01

I've just run a typical consumption dual fuel in one region and:

PPM - total number of available tariffs 25 - cheapest tariff £1154

DD - total number of available tariffs 108 - cheapest tariff £902

If you are DD you will have more choice and be able to select cheaper tariffs.

If I use cash cheque cost as a baseline and this is very high level but:
From a cost perspective DD is cheaper as statically there is less of a bad debt risk compared to CC and better cash flow
With PPM there is virtually no bad risk debt but the PPM infrastructure (keys/charging points etc.) makes it expensive which brings it back in line with CC. The infrastructure also has a physical tariff limit, it can only handle so many prices at any given time, so tariff numbers and choice are reduced.

When SMART in home Prepay takes off (I.e. you don’t need a key you just pay via credit/debit card/bank transfer online) the expensive PPM infrastructure will be removed along with the limit on tariff numbers so PPM tariff numbers and costs should start to move towards DD.

My own opinion is SMART in home prepay will become the normal payment choice.