Energy news in general

RG2015 · 25 May 2023 at 1:01PM

michaels said:

RG2015 said:

The Ofgem price cap for the average user is coming down to £2,074 from 1st July. The current energy comparable price guarantee for the is £2,500.

This represents a decrease of 17% so I initially estimated that my energy bill would also come down by about 17%. However, as I am electricity only, the new rates of 30p/kWh and 53p/day, shown in the post above only give me a 5.1% reduction.

I guess that the big "winners" are those with a gas supply.

My gas unit rate will increase from 10.3p to 13.3p - pah

How come?

Isn’t the new price cap (1st July) lower than the current energy price guarantee?

michaels · 25 May 2023 at 1:14PM

RG2015 said:

michaels said:

RG2015 said:

The Ofgem price cap for the average user is coming down to £2,074 from 1st July. The current energy comparable price guarantee for the is £2,500.

This represents a decrease of 17% so I initially estimated that my energy bill would also come down by about 17%. However, as I am electricity only, the new rates of 30p/kWh and 53p/day, shown in the post above only give me a 5.1% reduction.

I guess that the big "winners" are those with a gas supply.

My gas unit rate will increase from 10.3p to 13.3p - pah

How come?

Isn’t the new price cap (1st July) lower than the current energy price guarantee?

My fix was reduced by the EPG which will now no longer apply.

£300 fee if I come off the fix early and I would also have to give up a competitive electricity deal as it is a dual fuel fix with no either/or option.

RG2015 · 25 May 2023 at 1:22PM

michaels said:

RG2015 said:

michaels said:

RG2015 said:

The Ofgem price cap for the average user is coming down to £2,074 from 1st July. The current energy comparable price guarantee for the is £2,500.

This represents a decrease of 17% so I initially estimated that my energy bill would also come down by about 17%. However, as I am electricity only, the new rates of 30p/kWh and 53p/day, shown in the post above only give me a 5.1% reduction.

I guess that the big "winners" are those with a gas supply.

My gas unit rate will increase from 10.3p to 13.3p - pah

How come?

Isn’t the new price cap (1st July) lower than the current energy price guarantee?

My fix was reduced by the EPG which will now no longer apply.

£300 fee if I come off the fix early and I would also have to give up a competitive electricity deal as it is a dual fuel fix with no either/or option.

Okay thanks. I guess there won’t be many in your position.

I came off a two year fix in April so I missed most of the pain.

The_Green_Hornet · 26 May 2023 at 9:22AM

Ovo Energy customers hit with 'horror' bills of up to £116k

Ovo Energy customers have been hit with bills of up to £116,000 for a month's energy, the BBC has found.

Customers have claimed their energy usage has been miscalculated after transferring over to the energy giant or having a smart meter installed.

Some of their complaints have been upheld by the energy ombudsman yet they are still waiting for their account debt to be recalculated.

"We are very sorry for shortfalls in service," said an Ovo spokesperson.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-65544654

MattMattMattUK · 26 May 2023 at 10:14AM

michaels said:

MattMattMattUK said:

michaels said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Dolor said:

TheElectricCow said:

markin said:

Russia may have put sleeper explosives on Britain's offshore wind farms to knock out power in a conflict, ex-head of Royal Navy warns

I’m sure there’s plenty of awful things that any hostile country “may” do that has the potential to cause huge disruption, but from the perspective of the average UK domestic energy consumer I don’t think the possibility of underwater explosives planted on our wind turbines should be any more of a concern than any other potential assault on the country’s infrastructure at this time.

Such a deliberate act of war directly against the UK is probably not in anyone’s best interests, so the scenario of Russia blowing up our offshore wind turbines is probably not going to be something your typical household needs to worry about preparing for at this stage.

You are not thinking strategically. We live in an inter-connected World. No one is talking about blowing up a few offshore wind turbines: that said, it would be deemed to be an Act of War if it happened in UK waters.

The big concern is damage to the main inter-connectors between the UK mainland; Ireland and mainland Europe. History has shown that when these go out-of-service a spike in energy prices tends to follow. The other non energy-related concern is damage to our internet links which I suspect a lot of people would notice. Should any of these happen, we could see a return to high energy prices.

I agree, the interconnectors, gas pipelines to Norway and general telecoms connections are far better targets than a few wind turbines. There are fallback options for the internet but we would notice a huge slowdown on internationally hosted content, gas would not be much of concern at the moment, if they were going to target the supplies doing so during a cold spell when supplies are already stretched would be the most opportune time. Of course it would also become an article five situation so it would be a serious escalation by Russia and potentially one that even China might see as a step too far.

WE are still using lots of gas for electricity generation and would need to use even more if the electricity transmission lines were down - afaik we still don't have much gas storage.

In terms of pure storage around nine days at maximum, but usually closer to seven, however it can only supply 10% of peak supply when at maximum capacity and that supply rate drops as the storage empties. We produce around 35-40% from domestic production depending on season and around 11% from LNG and there are at any time tankers on station being unloaded which also represents a level of storage.

In a worse case scenario around 55% of daily usage comes from Norway and another 20% by pipelines from the Netherlands and Belgium, so depending on how many of them were lost would depend how much of a shortfall we had. If we lost the Britpipe (from Norway) we would have to implement immediate power rationing to reduce demand for both gas and electricity, probably 8-12 hour rolling power cuts for all domestic users and potentially a complete shutdown of industrial usage. On that basis we could just about get through the winter and restrictions might ease if we had a mild winter or people actually reduced usage to essential usage only when asked.

Scary to be that dependent on a single source - what if it were to fail through accident?

It depends what failed by accident. The pipeline from Norway would perhaps be the most significant, but is incredibly well monitored. The most likely points of failure are pumps/turbines, they are monitored and serviced regularly, there are spares on standby that could be switched out in hours and in most cases the pipeline can operate at a slightly reduced capacity with some of the turbines offline. The chances of the pipe itself failing are very low, it is monitored, expected parameters are very clear, any leak would be detected quickly and could be patched, catastrophic failure is pretty much outside of the realm of probability without shaped charges being used, it is even designed to be able to survive a direct impact from a sinking ship.

The_Green_Hornet · 6 June 2023 at 9:17AM

Energy giant SSE to pay £9.8m penalty for pricing breach

Energy giant SSE is to pay £9.8m for breaching its generation licence, the industry regulator has announced.

Ofgem said the Perth-based company overcharged the National Grid Electricity System Operator during a time of "transmission constraint".

This is when operators are paid to drop output if there is not enough network capacity to take power out of an area where generation outstrips demand.

Ofgem said there was no evidence that SSE's actions were deliberate.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-65818341

markin · 8 June 2023 at 10:52PM

Keeping UK energy bills down over winter cost almost £40bn, Treasury says

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jun/08/uk-energy-bills-support-cost-treasury-winter

michaels · 9 June 2023 at 11:26AM

Does anyone have what the price cap rates were over the winter they we could each work out based on usage how much the govt subsidised our personal bills by. I suspect the amounts will be pretty large for some people.

(We had entered into a fix which meant only our gas bill was reduced by about 2.5p per unit so about £375 plus the £400 that everyone got but I suspect had we been on SVR then the saving would have been several thousands)

CSI_Yorkshire · 9 June 2023 at 11:32AM

michaels said:

Does anyone have what the price cap rates were over the winter they we could each work out based on usage how much the govt subsidised our personal bills by. I suspect the amounts will be pretty large for some people.

(We had entered into a fix which meant only our gas bill was reduced by about 2.5p per unit so about £375 plus the £400 that everyone got but I suspect had we been on SVR then the saving would have been several thousands)

QrizB · 9 June 2023 at 11:36AM

michaels said:

Does anyone have what the price cap rates were over the winter they we could each work out based on usage how much the govt subsidised our personal bills by. I suspect the amounts will be pretty large for some people.

Some suppliers made the EPG payments explicit on their bills, so you can simply add them up.

Otherwise you'll want the Ofgem rates, published here:

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/latest-energy-price-cap-announced-ofgem

The headline (average national) rates were:

From 1 January the equivalent per unit level of the price cap to the nearest pence for a typical customer paying by direct debit will be 67p per kWh for electricity customers and a standing charge of 46p per day. The equivalent per unit level for a typical gas customer is 17p per kWh with a standing charge of 28p per day.

If you want the accurate regional rates, the tables are here (ex-VAT, and you'll need to do some calculation to get the daily SC and kWh prices):

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2022-11/Default tariff cap level - 1 January 2023 - 31 March 2023.pdf

And for April-to-June, the equivalent links are:

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/ofgem-announces-latest-quarterly-price-cap-update

and

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2023-02/Default tariff cap level - 1 April 2023 - 30 June 2023.pdf

Energy news in general

Comments

Ovo Energy customers hit with 'horror' bills of up to £116k

Russia may have put sleeper explosives on Britain's offshore wind farms to knock out power in a conflict, ex-head of Royal Navy warns

Energy giant SSE to pay £9.8m penalty for pricing breach

Keeping UK energy bills down over winter cost almost £40bn, Treasury says

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