Simple question? what is ofgems price cap per unit.

jimjames

I've tried the Excel calculator from Ofgem and it's coming out the same as the numbers I'd posted above but I wonder if it's because the ones I used are the standard credit tariff not direct debit ones. I'll check the difference between them.

Numbers used for Std Credit electricity from Ofgem link in earlier post
S/C £100.71 
3100kWh £727.09 
Gas
S/C £107.01
12000kWh £593.78

bristolleedsfan

jimjames said:

I've tried the Excel calculator from Ofgem and it's coming out the same as the numbers I'd posted above but I wonder if it's because the ones I used are the standard credit tariff not direct debit ones. I'll check the difference between them.

Numbers used for Std Credit electricity from Ofgem link in earlier post
S/C £100.71 
3100kWh £727.09 
Gas
S/C £107.01
12000kWh £593.78

SC/KWH rates at least for Nth West correct on this table https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78622304/#Comment_78622304

Chrysalis

Forbes late to the game but got there.

https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/personal-finance/2021/09/20/energy-market-updates/

[Deleted User]

jimjames said:

Chrysalis said:

As a challenge I thought it might be interesting to do a calculator so you can see at a glance what the rates are rather than just seeing the annual totals.

https://r6fd51uoetngaqh-db202106081427.adb.uk-london-1.oraclecloudapps.com/ords/r/apex_live/energy-price-calculator

Any feedback would be welcome. Next stage is to allow calculation of your own usage by entering numbers but first was to show the Ofgem price cap values.

This should be a sticky! Why isn't it on OFGEM's website?

I too spent a long time on their site looking for the same info as you, and found nothing.

Edit: Has anyone actually found this information by browsing OFGEMS site directly? (rather than following the link from MSE).

Booksandplants

Thank you all for raising the point about actual unit rates and standing charges.  I have always been interested in the rates rather than the ‘cost per annum’ which is next to useless.  How it has become the standard for comparing prices I do not know!  

My supplier is now Octopus and I’m waiting to hear what our rates, tariff, DD etc will be. 

For clarity in the future I hope all suppliers will more easily show actual rates.  But then I guess the majority of people aren’t really interested for what ever reason.

wittynamegoeshere

It's stated like this because Ofgem in fact regulates the industry based on a maximum annual cost calculated from some kind of typical household definition of consumption.  It's actually up to each supplier how they want to break this down into daily and per unit charges.  They all choose to do this slightly differently but generally end up in the same sort of region.

E.g. I don't think there's anything actually stopping a supplier from charging £3 per day fixed fee (£1095/year), plus a tiny per unit charge so that a typical household would end up paying the £1300-ish that Ofgem says the maximum would be.  But of course then they'd be rightly targeted by those with huge consumption and would go bust.

Similarly, a supplier could charge no fixed fee and make up the maximum entirely from the maximum fee divided by the typical consumption.  But then they'd be targeted by those with really low consumption so would lose money on these customers.

They probably base their decisions on their actual fixed and variable costs, and also try and maximise the amount they take based on their actual customer profile.  I'm sure there's a computer program somewhere in each head office that lets someone wiggle the two variables and displays the total ££££s that their customers will end up paying them.  They just find the point where this number is the maximum.

MWT

wittynamegoeshere said:

E.g. I don't think there's anything actually stopping a supplier from charging £3 per day fixed fee (£1095/year), plus a tiny per unit charge so that a typical household would end up paying the £1300-ish that Ofgem says the maximum would be.  But of course then they'd be rightly targeted by those with huge consumption and would go bust.

That isn't possible as the cap specifies both the maximum allowed standing charge and the maximum cost (including the standing charge) for a defined typical user.

So a supplier can charge from zero up to the capped maximum for the standing charge (around 24.8p).

wittynamegoeshere

OK, makes sense.  So there's no cap on the per unit charge, but it's effectively limited by the overall cost per year based on a zero daily charge.

MWT

Yes, that is correct.

We tend to only talk about the single rate DD tariff cap, but it is worth remembering that there are different caps for different payment methods and for multi-rate tariffs vs single rate, but they all work in the same way (the multi-rate assumes a 42/58 split between day and night).

molerat

wittynamegoeshere said:

E.g. I don't think there's anything actually stopping a supplier from charging £3 per day fixed fee (£1095/year), plus a tiny per unit charge so that a typical household would end up paying the £1300-ish that Ofgem says the maximum would be.  But of course then they'd be rightly targeted by those with huge consumption and would go bust.

Similarly, a supplier could charge no fixed fee and make up the maximum entirely from the maximum fee divided by the typical consumption.  But then they'd be targeted by those with really low consumption so would lose money on these customers.

There is a maximum daily charge, the nil kWh cap, so they could not get away with very high SC and minimal unit cost.