Zero (or v low) standing charge business electricity?

tg99

Hi,

Our business electricity supply consumes very little energy pa as it's just the landlord's supply for two outside lights on our house converted into flats so actual electricity cost excluding standing charge only about £5 pa with the remaining c£90 of our annual bill being the standing charge. About to start looking at changing from current supplier npower and wanted to see if anyone is aware of providers who offer zero or low standing charge tariffs (as last time I phoned around none did).

Thks

Neil_Jones

You may do better getting in contact with switching companies that specialise in gas/electricity for business contracts, as it works in an entirely different way for business compared to the domestic market - no cooling off for example.

Such as USwitch for Business, MakeitCheaper, etc.

Robin9

Opus @15p a day

tg99

Thanks both. I think a price comparison service was used previously when rates last reviewed but not the ones you've mentioned so will try them next week and look at Opus which is significantly lower than our current Npower standing charge (23p a day). Actually on a rolling 30 day contract with Npower at present as came to the end of a one year deal with them where they gave a £100 credit so net cost pa was close to zero.....unsurprisingly were not willing to offer another credit to retain us!

tg99

Uswitch didn't come out with anything materially cheaper then my current tariff as lowest standing charge was similar to what I'm currently on. They confirmed Opus was included in their results showing at 24p sc and when I called Opus they also confirmed this 24p sc tariff would be their quote. But when I said I wouldn't be interested then given not cheaper than current tariff they magically came up with the 15p sc referred to above so thanks for the tip off!

lstar337

tg99 wrote: »

Hi,

Our business electricity supply consumes very little energy pa as it's just the landlord's supply for two outside lights on our house converted into flats so actual electricity cost excluding standing charge only about £5 pa with the remaining c£90 of our annual bill being the standing charge. About to start looking at changing from current supplier npower and wanted to see if anyone is aware of providers who offer zero or low standing charge tariffs (as last time I phoned around none did).

Thks

Can you not just get rid of the supply and connect it to one of the flats and take a little off the rent for inconvenience? It would save a lot of money.

tg99

lstar337 wrote: »

Can you not just get rid of the supply and connect it to one of the flats and take a little off the rent for inconvenience? It would save a lot of money.

There is no rent as our flats are all leasehold with share of freehold and there are only three so essentially the landlords supply bill is divided between me and the two others. I know what you mean though as I did start to look into this before going into the Npower deal when the credit they applied to our account meant the effective cost was zero so wouldn't have been worth it. But now this first year deal has ended I guess might be worth looking into again. Is this something you have experience of going through as I think when I briefly looked into it before I didn't get very far in establishing the process by which the removal and reconnection of supply would be done and the costs involved and who would have ultimate responsibility for it? I'm thinking my first point of call would be to contact the electricity distributor for London (Uk Power Networks) to see what would be involved.

lstar337

It's not something I have done, but it gets posted here a lot.

First I would get an electrician to look into the possibility of moving the lights on to the supply of one of the flats. Then ask the supplier to terminate and remove the supply.

somebody else may have a better idea of the technicalities.

tg99

Actually now thinking it makes sense just to switch supplier to a residential tariff with v low or no standing charge given that the property is used for domestic and not business purposes.

gilbert_and_sullivan

Ebico have no standing charges at all.