Energy news in general

savers_united

artyboy said:

Mstty said:

@savers_united

I completely disagree. The fix we took and lots of others did here too with Eon Next will save us an estimated £1350 from October 2022 - April 2024(projecting 47p per kWh for electricity). It costs us no more than the current cap from April 2022-Oct 2023.

There are also zero exit fees should a jump become possible to a long term deal. Offering longer term security should the market confirm higher prices for the next xxx years.

Some of this is just down to pot luck of the SOLR process and whether you ended up with Eon,BG, Octopus, EDF etc.

But looking forward I would always look for a fix deal with low to no exit fees and trim the energy use accordingly.

Delaying the inevitable? Or just protecting ourselves for 2 years, saving money to put towards a solar installation and perhaps in 2 years time the landscape may be a little nicer or at least so sunshine on the horizon.

Hi, signed up to comment when I read the post about fixing just delaying the inevitable (not least because I almost spat my coffee out!) - well I'm on a sainsburys tariff which is basically Eon Next as well - ends November 2023, and by my reckoning we'll save well over £10,000 versus being on the cap over that 2 year period.

Yes we're a high usage household, and it will definitely be a shock at the end of next year for sure, but more than happy to delay/save what I can for as long as I can...

Not going to argue with your projections but a "savings" of £10k over 2 years against what has been a fairly decent rate SVT up until now and when you consider low heating needs this time of year. It's only really going to go nuts from October when we get the next rise on the SVT and move into the winter season. So to make £10k saving in this window would mean your using well above what most on this forum are and don't think is really representative of the point I was making about people fixing for a year 12 mths ago are not likely to have made much of a savings if any v the SVT, but those who fixed for 2 years in the November when Gas prices dipped and a few decent fixes were made available will see far greater benefit, but giving up a 12mth fix only 5 months in for a higher rate is sometimes hard for people to accept, hence in the end the way that prices are going most if any will be unable to escape the impact of the price rises that could go on for a few more years yet.
And those of us on here tend to keep a close eye on deals and prices, most do not and once they fix leave it for the term. 

savers_united

ihatetrump said:

savers_united said:

Fixing in the current climate is just delaying the inevitable, when your in a fix your often locked out of other fixed products that may be slightly more expensive but offer longer security, when your deal ends the jump can be quite large especially for those who do not monitor prices until their renewel offer comes through. It's all a gamble, working out if I had entered a more costly 2 year fix at the start of all this when Martin advised to stick with the SVT would been better off.

The only real way to offset the rising costs is to cut back but understand that is not always easy and limits to what you can do especially with high standing charges

I couldn't disagree more - quite simply no one knows what will happen - even the largest suppliers didn't have a clue this time last year what would happen - no one has a crystal ball - not even Martin. The big suppliers employ teams of experts to model various scenarios and even they got it wrong last year.

I took a punt last September only because I could see the way things were going with AVRO et al. I was with Igloo at the time and decided to bail on them literally days before they went into administration.

My punt was to go for the longest possible fix BUT only with a supplier who I felt could weather any storm that hit and therefore I wasn't interested in smaller players. My choice was EDF and the fix I got then was 19.02 per KwH for electricity and 3.74p per KwH for gas - fixed until September 2024.Standing charges were 22.63 for electricity and 24.87p for gas. No penalties for switching - but atm you'd have to drag me kicking and screaming to leave!

The sticker shock I will face in October 2024 will be eye watering - unless things change in the meantime.

The purpose of this post is not to gloat, but merely to emphasise that even the largest suppliers with all the tools and resources at their disposal get it wrong - why else would I have been able to get such a ridiculously cheap fixed (and long) tariff from one of the largest suppliers only days before things went so incredibly haywire?

Cracking deal, but few would choose to fix for 3 years, and not many suppliers even back before this energy crisis would offer those terms of 3 years no exit fee. The Russian invasion of Ukraine did not even feature and prices were rising on the back of post Covid recovery and low storage / other factors. 

For me now it's all about the long term average and you have given yourself a good start. What has changed, is that this time last year the thought process was it being more of a spike and within 12-18mths prices would be back down, all bets are now off to how long this will last.

You may be faced with that situation come early 2024, you have 10mths left to run on your fix and rates of new fixed deals have dropped back from their highs but still more than double your current rates, but are projected to go back up again by Winter 2024, it's whether you take the hit giving up months of your current fix, and fixing for another couple of years or see the full term and move to a new fix /SVT in the October at potentially even higher rates. 

Thankfully for you that decision is at the minute a long way off. 

ihatetrump

@savers_united

Still don't agree with your assumptions here - just like the old warning on investments, past history is not a predictor of future performance.

I consume 16k KWH annually of electricity and 18k KWH of gas (way over the average I know - old house, 30 y/o boiler etc blah blah blah).

Annual cost of my fixed deal (ignoring standing charge which is not future forecasted) is £3,716 and will be until September 2024.

Using forecasted Jan 2023 rates as per @Mstty (.502 per KWH Elect & .157 per KWH Gas) - my annual cost would be £10,858. In other words my fix at 2023 rates will be saving me £7,142 per annum.

As per my earlier comment, no one has a crystal ball - but going with a fix with no exit penalties in my case is now akin to hedging but with no downside 

Evan3020

Your electric is 5 times the average, are you running a business?

ihatetrump

@Evan3020

Don't get me started!

5 bedrooms to start with - old windows (soon to be replaced) 32 year old gas boiler (soon to be replaced) + Washing machine and tumble dryer that seem to run constantly - hot water being used for baths & showers all the time, underfloor electric heating, dishwasher, microwave - plus any number of other devices always running - all adds up. Time to check out where it all goes me thinks and crack the whip a little. 

Evan3020

Solar panels would work well for you.

savers_united

ihatetrump said:

@savers_united

Still don't agree with your assumptions here - just like the old warning on investments, past history is not a predictor of future performance.

I consume 16k KWH annually of electricity and 18k KWH of gas (way over the average I know - old house, 30 y/o boiler etc blah blah blah).

Annual cost of my fixed deal (ignoring standing charge which is not future forecasted) is £3,716 and will be until September 2024.

Using forecasted Jan 2023 rates as per @Mstty (.502 per KWH Elect & .157 per KWH Gas) - my annual cost would be £10,858. In other words my fix at 2023 rates will be saving me £7,142 per annum.

As per my earlier comment, no one has a crystal ball - but going with a fix with no exit penalties in my case is now akin to hedging but with no downside 

My original post was referring to the current situation, you fixed before the brown stuff hit the fan and for a period that not many would likely have taken with the knowledge at the time, you called it right. But it does also highlight the point I make, at the time you were free to jump onto that tariff, had you been maybe 12mths left to run on an existing fix at an even lower rate I guess 1, you would not have been looking to switch and 2, not knowing what was ahead would likely have stuck to your current deal. You would have been quids in for the 12mths you had left but would have lost that 3 year deal and overall be paying now alot over that period. 
Its like now people are having to decide between 60p elec fix or cap at approx 48p from October, based on your usage that difference would be massive initially but what would it look like over 2 years is more difficult to call. 

StartledJesus

@pochase @mstty What is the source of the table you are referring to, Cornwall Insight? Do you have to subscribe i.e. pay Cornwall to access it? 

pochase

Here you go

https://www.cornwall-insight.com/press/price-cap-to-remain-significantly-above-3000-a-year-until-at-least-2024/

StartledJesus

StartledJesus said:

To be quite honest, until I started looking into these things this year, I was not even aware of any such thing as an Energy Performance Assessment or an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) for my property, or that I should be aspiring to at least a grade D rating, on a scale of G to A, with A being the best (similar to efficiency ratings on white goods etc).

Now I don't think I am particularly stupid, or ignorant or poorly informed, which suggests that there is a disconnect between Government and the consumer, when it comes to education, publicity and the dissemination of information about such things.

I think it is partly explained by the fact that I have lived in the same house for forty years, so I have had few dealings with the property market. i.e I have not been a frequent mover or had any experience of new-builds. So I suspect that I would have had more knowledge of things like EPCs if I had, and that a prospective buyer would ask me about it, or search for the information on a public database. 

Of course, the laws of supply and demand, and the law of Sod, dictate that just when things like support and grants are required, there is massive competition for them, or they do not exist. 

 

No-one responded to this when I posted this on page 94. So is everyone apart from me completely au fait with the EPC system? 

The annoying thing is, and now increasingly annoying, is that further to our assessment, we qualified for a FREE solar installation, for a value of between £5k and £10k, via a local council grant scheme. However, when it came to it, the installation proved to be impracticable, because of the age and construction of our property, and the location of our electricity supply. Essentially, the works would have entailed massive disruption, and probably a complete electrical re wire and upgrading of the distribution board. Unfortunately this was not discovered until the contractor turned up to carry out the installation. The scaffold was up and everything…