Energy firm gone bust? How your new firm and tariff stacks up

wild666

The price cap is based on 2900 kWh electric and 12000 kWh gas if you use less you will pay less but if you use more then you will pay more than the capped price. Personally I never use more than 2200 kWh electric and around 2500 kWh gas so well under the capped prices. Since Avro went under I've turned everything off at the socket except the fridge, freezer and the router, and the daily usage has dropped from 6 kWh per day to just 3 kWh per day except Friday when it's 7 kWh that's due to the laundry and drying it. My usage is likely to be around 1700 kWh saving over £100 in the next 12 months with the Octopus rates.

Petriix

tony863 said:

Apologies for jumping on this thread, but it doesn't make sense to set up a new one. I'm also a Pure Planet customer and naturally concerned about what's happening next. I had ~ £100 credit before they went bust, has that now been lost? It says on their website its protected, but worth asking. 

Separate to that, my annual consumption was approx 7500khw of both gas and electric. Someone mentioned the cap price is based on a typical customer using 12000khw and 2500khw. One of mine is lower, but the other much higher! Am I reading that incorrectly? 

In terms of prices, I'm currently paying 14.6p electricity and 2.7p gas, plus £13 per month membership charge. I pay £90pm in the summer months and £145pm in the winter. I know it's a guess, but can anyone give me a guess on how much more this will cost me? I've already disabled the heating to keep costs down, but worried (like many) that we won't be able to afford the extra costs.

Finally, is it worth getting oil filled radiators in the main rooms and turning off the central heating for the house? It seems extreme, but oil rads are around £50 for decent ones and obviously use electric to warm up. My thinking here is that electric is cheaper than gas. Thoughts? 
 

You've got that totally wrong, gas is vastly cheaper than electric (around 20% of the price).

Switch as much of your use to gas as you can. 1kWh of heat is 1kWh of heat, regardless of the source (ok, gas boilers do lose some heat to the outside world, but nowhere near the ~ 80% it would have to be to make it more expensive than electric). The only way to save money on space heating is to heat less of it or to burn wood which you've acquired for free.

liz3chickens

I switched away from Pure Planet (to Bulb) earlier this month and am £96 in credit with them. Anyone know how I get this money and who from now they’ve gone bust?

QrizB

liz3chickens said:

I switched away from Pure Planet (to Bulb) earlier this month and am £96 in credit with them. Anyone know how I get this money and who from now they’ve gone bust?

Pure Planet customers will be moved to a supplier of Last Resort (SoLR). The SoLR will also have the job of paying any outstanding refunds due to customers like you who have recently switched away.

This could take several months so don't expect to see your £96 until next year.

QrizB

tony863 said:

Apologies for jumping on this thread, but it doesn't make sense to set up a new one. I'm also a Pure Planet customer and naturally concerned about what's happening next. I had ~ £100 credit before they went bust, has that now been lost? It says on their website its protected, but worth asking.

Your account, plus its credit, will be transferred from Pure Planet to another supplier, the Supplier of Last Resort (SoLR). The SoLR should be in touch in a week or two. It may take 3-4 months before your new account is fully set up.

tony863 said:

Separate to that, my annual consumption was approx 7500khw of both gas and electric. Someone mentioned the cap price is based on a typical customer using 12000khw and 2500khw. One of mine is lower, but the other much higher! Am I reading that incorrectly?

Yes, you're using roughly 3x as much electricity as the "average" user but around 1/2 as much gas.

tony863 said:

In terms of prices, I'm currently paying 14.6p electricity and 2.7p gas, plus £13 per month membership charge. I pay £90pm in the summer months and £145pm in the winter. I know it's a guess, but can anyone give me a guess on how much more this will cost me?

Your current Pure Planet tariff works out at £120/month, on average.

The SoLR's tariff is likely to be around 4p/kWh and 25p/day for gas, plus 21p/kWh and 25p/day for electricity. On those prices your annual bill we be about £2050, or £170/month if you pay the same every month. We are however coming in to winter so the next 6 months will probably cost quite a bit more than that.

tony863 said:

Finally, is it worth getting oil filled radiators in the main rooms and turning off the central heating for the house? It seems extreme, but oil rads are around £50 for decent ones and obviously use electric to warm up. My thinking here is that electric is cheaper than gas. Thoughts?

Gas is 1/5th the price of electricity.

Unless you're eg. one person living in a 80-room Georgian mansion, it's probably still cheaper to run the central heating (and just turn radiators down in unused rooms) than to run electric heaters in the main rooms.

MWT

wild666 said:

The price cap is based on 2900 kWh electric and 12000 kWh gas...

Just for the sake of accuracy, the cap for a single-rate meter is based on 3100kWh and 12000kWh, but you often see this recalculated on the basis of 2900kWh as that is the figure the suppliers are obliged to use when giving quotes.

Agreed that this is confusing but that is the way Ofgem decided to do it, 3100 for their cap calculation and 2900 for quotations...

Also remember it isn't one cap, there are actually 9 different caps, each split by region covering the combinations of gas/electric meter type and payment method.

The most common one you see referenced is for gas and single-rate electric meter with DD payment.

tony863

Great replies from everyone, thank you. I've no idea how I'm 3 x the average in terms of electricity. We are in a 3 bed semi, no high demand items like fish tanks. How the hell are we 3 x the average! 

The predictions of extra costs are genuinely frightening. I already struggle to pay all the bills and be left with more than £50 per week. Looks like all of that will be gone as well. 

QrizB

tony863 said:

Great replies from everyone, thank you. I've no idea how I'm 3 x the average in terms of electricity. We are in a 3 bed semi, no high demand items like fish tanks. How the hell are we 3 x the average!

Things you can check:

• Space heating. Electric radiators are expensive, gas CH is cheap.
• Electric water heaters / immersion heater. If you have gas CH it's almost always cheaper to use that instead.
• Electric showers. As above, a mixer shower or a shallow bath could cost less if you use water heated with gas.
• Old fridges and freezers. An ancient appliance might use 600kWh/yr; a newer one, 100-200kWh/yr. "American style" ones seem particularly bad in this regard.
• Tungsten (incandescent) lights, particularly in frequently-used rooms. Or in the loft if you forget to switch it off!
  

I'm sure there are other examples, these are just the ones that come immediately to mind.