Best fixed electricity tariff

Phones4Chris

macman said:

Phones4Chris said:

macman said:

Why make this sound so complex? Any price comp site will do the calculation for you taking both the unit cost and the standing charge into account. Just feed it the right kWh input. OP already has an ASHP and so should have some idea of what it's using during the heating season.

Most people who go down the heat pump route will have done some research and have a reasonable idea of what the annual usage is likely to be: it's not exactly an impulse buy.

Because it is NOT straight forward! As several of us have now said or implied, you need to consider the effect of higher or lower usage on the bill. Purely going by the "supposed" savings from a comparison site is a mistake. Yes, you use the ones with the biggest predicted savings as a guide, but then look at unit price and standing charge. @Matelodave has given a nice example!

At no point did I suggest being lured by the 'supposed savings'. As I've said, the only figure that matters is the total annual cost.

Exactly which is why I said it IS NOT straight forward. If your underestimated the usage, your bill could be a lot larger than you bargain for if it's a higher unit cost and low standing charge tariff! I wasn't suggesting that you implied you should be lured by supposed savings alone!
This post got it right

Dolor said:

The KISS principle of energy contracts is that high users are better off on a contract with a high DSC and a low unit price, and low users fair better on a low DSC/high unit price contract. Why? Because PCWs are only accurate if the consumer actually uses the estimated annual amount. Plus or minus 10% can make a big difference to the annual energy cost.

That's of course assuming you pick the one with lowest cost for your own specific case, taking account of how your usage may vary.

Tallerdave

Phones4Chris said:

That's of course assuming you pick the one with lowest cost for your own specific case, taking account of how your usage may vary.

But that's just what a comparison site does, as it sorts results in order of increasing cost. Running 3 searches with the average consumption, a figure a bit lower and a figure a bit higher will highlight whether the user is near a boundary condition where the cheapest supplier/tariff switches.

macman

Phones4Chris said:

macman said:

Phones4Chris said:

macman said:

Why make this sound so complex? Any price comp site will do the calculation for you taking both the unit cost and the standing charge into account. Just feed it the right kWh input. OP already has an ASHP and so should have some idea of what it's using during the heating season.

Most people who go down the heat pump route will have done some research and have a reasonable idea of what the annual usage is likely to be: it's not exactly an impulse buy.

Because it is NOT straight forward! As several of us have now said or implied, you need to consider the effect of higher or lower usage on the bill. Purely going by the "supposed" savings from a comparison site is a mistake. Yes, you use the ones with the biggest predicted savings as a guide, but then look at unit price and standing charge. @Matelodave has given a nice example!

At no point did I suggest being lured by the 'supposed savings'. As I've said, the only figure that matters is the total annual cost.

Exactly which is why I said it IS NOT straight forward. If your underestimated the usage, your bill could be a lot larger than you bargain for if it's a higher unit cost and low standing charge tariff! I wasn't suggesting that you implied you should be lured by supposed savings alone!
This post got it right

Dolor said:

The KISS principle of energy contracts is that high users are better off on a contract with a high DSC and a low unit price, and low users fair better on a low DSC/high unit price contract. Why? Because PCWs are only accurate if the consumer actually uses the estimated annual amount. Plus or minus 10% can make a big difference to the annual energy cost.

That's of course assuming you pick the one with lowest cost for your own specific case, taking account of how your usage may vary.

I'm scratching my head to see your logic here. What you are suggesting is that a comp site is a poor method to rely on if you input the wrong kWh usage. But surely any method is going to be inaccurate if you get that wrong. Are you suggesting that you ignore the best deal based on total annual cost, and instead pick the one that is cheapest if you rerun the figures again, but with 10% plus or minus? 

Phones4Chris

Tallerdave said:

Phones4Chris said:

That's of course assuming you pick the one with lowest cost for your own specific case, taking account of how your usage may vary.

But that's just what a comparison site does, as it sorts results in order of increasing cost. Running 3 searches with the average consumption, a figure a bit lower and a figure a bit higher will highlight whether the user is near a boundary condition where the cheapest supplier/tariff switches.

No it's not, because of the first assumption the comparison sites make, and that is that the supposed saving is based on the fact that when your current deal ends you go onto a standard tariff with that supplier (which is usually a variable one) and remain on it for the year. How many people actually do that? Few. You are not interested in some "artificial" saving, you are interested in what it actually costs you, you can only do that correctly by doing your own sums, which is why at least two of us in this thread have said that.

niktheguru

Phones4Chris said:

Tallerdave said:

Phones4Chris said:

That's of course assuming you pick the one with lowest cost for your own specific case, taking account of how your usage may vary.

But that's just what a comparison site does, as it sorts results in order of increasing cost. Running 3 searches with the average consumption, a figure a bit lower and a figure a bit higher will highlight whether the user is near a boundary condition where the cheapest supplier/tariff switches.

No it's not, because of the first assumption the comparison sites make, and that is that the supposed saving is based on the fact that when your current deal ends you go onto a standard tariff with that supplier (which is usually a variable one) and remain on it for the year. How many people actually do that? Few. You are not interested in some "artificial" saving, you are interested in what it actually costs you, you can only do that correctly by doing your own sums, which is why at least two of us in this thread have said that.

Not strictly true, if using the CEC comparison you merely just need to click the tick box to compare to your current deal and not the “standard variable” at the top of the page. (And yes I know it doesn’t include some of the utility companies)

Phones4Chris

niktheguru said:

Phones4Chris said:

Tallerdave said:

Phones4Chris said:

That's of course assuming you pick the one with lowest cost for your own specific case, taking account of how your usage may vary.

But that's just what a comparison site does, as it sorts results in order of increasing cost. Running 3 searches with the average consumption, a figure a bit lower and a figure a bit higher will highlight whether the user is near a boundary condition where the cheapest supplier/tariff switches.

No it's not, because of the first assumption the comparison sites make, and that is that the supposed saving is based on the fact that when your current deal ends you go onto a standard tariff with that supplier (which is usually a variable one) and remain on it for the year. How many people actually do that? Few. You are not interested in some "artificial" saving, you are interested in what it actually costs you, you can only do that correctly by doing your own sums, which is why at least two of us in this thread have said that.

Not strictly true, if using the CEC comparison you merely just need to click the tick box to compare to your current deal and not the “standard variable” at the top of the page. (And yes I know it doesn’t include some of the utility companies)

And not everyone, including me, will use CEC for the very reason it doesn't include some utility companies. Those of us saying similar things are trying to be general rather than comment with regard to specific sites.

Phones4Chris

macman said:

Phones4Chris said:

macman said:

Phones4Chris said:

macman said:

Why make this sound so complex? Any price comp site will do the calculation for you taking both the unit cost and the standing charge into account. Just feed it the right kWh input. OP already has an ASHP and so should have some idea of what it's using during the heating season.

Most people who go down the heat pump route will have done some research and have a reasonable idea of what the annual usage is likely to be: it's not exactly an impulse buy.

Because it is NOT straight forward! As several of us have now said or implied, you need to consider the effect of higher or lower usage on the bill. Purely going by the "supposed" savings from a comparison site is a mistake. Yes, you use the ones with the biggest predicted savings as a guide, but then look at unit price and standing charge. @Matelodave has given a nice example!

At no point did I suggest being lured by the 'supposed savings'. As I've said, the only figure that matters is the total annual cost.

Exactly which is why I said it IS NOT straight forward. If your underestimated the usage, your bill could be a lot larger than you bargain for if it's a higher unit cost and low standing charge tariff! I wasn't suggesting that you implied you should be lured by supposed savings alone!
This post got it right

Dolor said:

The KISS principle of energy contracts is that high users are better off on a contract with a high DSC and a low unit price, and low users fair better on a low DSC/high unit price contract. Why? Because PCWs are only accurate if the consumer actually uses the estimated annual amount. Plus or minus 10% can make a big difference to the annual energy cost.

That's of course assuming you pick the one with lowest cost for your own specific case, taking account of how your usage may vary.

I'm scratching my head to see your logic here. What you are suggesting is that a comp site is a poor method to rely on if you input the wrong kWh usage. But surely any method is going to be inaccurate if you get that wrong. Are you suggesting that you ignore the best deal based on total annual cost, and instead pick the one that is cheapest if you rerun the figures again, but with 10% plus or minus? 

Right firstly, I can see why you thought I suggested you implied one should go by "supposed savings". That was my bad phrasing, the sentence "Purely going by the "supposed" savings...." should not have been in the same paragraph. It was a general comment for anyone using comparison sites.
I did not say if you input the wrong kWh usage it's a poor method, but of course it is! Nor did I say "rerun" the figures again with + and - whatever %, not only is that a tedious method to go through that, with some sites it generates endless emails! What I've said is "Look at the unit cost and standing charge (of those suggestions that give the lowest annual costs/biggest savings) and do your owns sums" and make an allowance for how your usage may vary.
The logic is very simple, the cheapest total annual cost, or the biggest "supposed savings" given by a comparison site is not necessarily the "best" deal IF your usage is not what you expect, thought, guessed, estimated, whatever. In an earlier post you said forget the unit cost, sorry that is totally wrong. I'm sorry you can't see that. I'd already sighted Matelodave's post as an excellent example as to why you should do your own sums. Dolor & Gerry1 have said similar things. In fact there's another thread saying pretty much the same.

In general many users of comparison sites will not be entering accurate kWh, they enter typical figures for an x-bedroom house, or how much they think they spent etc. and it's certainly not going to give accurate results. The OP certainly won't need to read all this, he'll have already worked out what to do from what was said on the first page. Anyone else will be able to see what we've said and can make their own decisions on how to go about it, so this is now a pointless debate.