1st House, which energy supplier - tips needed

aviii

hi
i will be moving into my first house soon.
i am not sure how to select my energy supplier, Gas and Electric - which one will give me the best price.

Do i choice one like - British Gas for a year and them see what my bills are like before changing?

The property is about 15 years old however has not been lived in for about 6 months.
do i need to get anything tested?

thanks

Neil_Jones

You will start off with a supplier, whoever that may be, probably on the standard tariff and you can then switch provider, remembering of course to pay for usage you've used until the switch goes through.

You can find out who you're (going to be) with via the telephone numbers here:
https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/guides/who-supplies-my-electricity-and-gas/

As to seeing what your bills are like, you'll have to guess initially. Use the national average figures - 16500kWh for Gas and 3100kWh for electricity - initially and see who gives you the best tariff on those figures and you can always move again later once you've a better idea of how much energy you use.

As to getting things tested, depends who's responsible for what. If you're renting the place it may not be your responsibility to test certain things like the boiler, oven and gas fire, if any of these are present. Electric items typically when they keel over and die either just die or trip the fuse box en route as they die.

anto164

We did that - Lived in the house for 6 months to get a basis of payments in place and letting other things settle down, then i'm undergoing a switch at the moment (our last bill was 5x the normal amount we have been paying as the price of gas is high with our existing supplier, and due to the fact we have had the heating on)

Calculate how much the standing charge is, the price per kwh. then do the same with the new suppliers. It can get confusing but you can get a good saving.

What you may be able to do is look at your first bill then use their estimated annual usage for the utilities. If that's not available, then use the figures as posted in the above.

victor2

Use a comparison site such as uSwitch and when you don't know your usage, it lets you estimate it by just answering a few questions like how many bedrooms, type of heating etc.
Look at the suppliers it suggests for the level of usage it estimates and go from there. If you go for a fixed tariff, you may want to choose one with no exit penalty, so that you can switch once you've established what your annual usage is likely to be.
Bear in mind of course that in winter, your usage of gas (assuming you have gas heating) will be much higher than in the summer, so you'll be using much more gas each month than 1/12 of the estimated annual usage, so a tariff with a fairly high standing charge, but low kWh rate may be more beneficial than a low standing charge and high kWh rate through the winter - then you can switch in the summer.
When you don't have electric heating, you could well find that monthly usage of electricity is fairly constant throughout the year, especially if you have low energy lighting.

footyguy

aviii wrote: »

hi
i will be moving into my first house soon.
i am not sure how to select my energy supplier, Gas and Electric - which one will give me the best price.

Do i choice one like - British Gas for a year and them see what my bills are like before changing?

The property is about 15 years old however has not been lived in for about 6 months.
do i need to get anything tested?

thanks

Presumably you bought this property? If so, congratulations

Hopefully you had a survey undertaken? Read it and follow any advice given.

In regards energy, you need to register first with the existing supplier(s)

Read this for what to do then
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/you-switch-gas-electricity


Edit: It would appear I already pointed you to that link 3 months ago :cool:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5527187

Good luck!