Standing Charges

StephanA

I'm on a fixed tariff with E.On till January.... I expect the advice to be to accept their variable tariff ... but I have a problem with doing this ...
My current standing charge is 7p/day for each of Gas and Electricity... that is £51.10 per annum.

The new standing charge is 26p/day which leads to an annual charge of £189.80 ... a 370% increase!!!!

Currently my energy usage is very low  ... spending about £420 pa in total, including the standing charge.......I know the cost is going to go up for the energy use itself, .... but hiking up the standing charge (presumably to recoup the profits they would otherwise make) ....is just taking very unfair advantage ... Has anyone else had their bills unsuspectingly stacked in this way?

bristolleedsfan

StephanA said:

I'm on a fixed tariff with E.On till January.... I expect the advice to be to accept their variable tariff ... but I have a problem with doing this ...
My current standing charge is 7p/day for each of Gas and Electricity... that is £51.10 per annum.

The new standing charge is 26p/day which leads to an annual charge of £189.80 ... a 370% increase!!!!

Currently my energy usage is very low  ... spending about £420 pa in total, including the standing charge.......I know the cost is going to go up for the energy use itself, .... but hiking up the standing charge (presumably to recoup the profits they would otherwise make) ....is just taking very unfair advantage ... Has anyone else had their bills unsuspectingly stacked in this way?

Standing Charges are not being hiked, last year you took advantage of new customer loss leader/teaser, this year S/C are in line with what large suppliers charge most of its customers

Ectophile

Energy suppliers have been phasing out their no/low standing charge contracts for a while now. They realised that those contracts attract the lowest users, and who wants to be the company that caters for the people who spend the least?

The new price is about the industry norm now.

MWT

This is something that many are facing this year, the prices they were on last year often didn't fully reflect the costs involved, both for standing charge and kWh so the prices this year are huge increases over the loss-leaders, but not over the reality that they were shielded from last year.

Right now, both standing charges and kWh are generally at the level of the Ofgem cap, so no, the standing charge has not been raised to 'recoup profits' just put as high as allowed by Ofgem to reduce, but not eliminate, losses...

Cardew

StephanA said:

I'm on a fixed tariff with E.On till January.... I expect the advice to be to accept their variable tariff ... but I have a problem with doing this ...
My current standing charge is 7p/day for each of Gas and Electricity... that is £51.10 per annum.

The new standing charge is 26p/day which leads to an annual charge of £189.80 ... a 370% increase!!!!

Currently my energy usage is very low  ... spending about £420 pa in total, including the standing charge.......I know the cost is going to go up for the energy use itself, .... but hiking up the standing charge (presumably to recoup the profits they would otherwise make) ....is just taking very unfair advantage ... Has anyone else had their bills unsuspectingly stacked in this way?

There were many thousands of people with second/holiday homes who used to take advantage of the Ebico nil cost Daily Standing Charge.(DSC) When this finished a couple of years ago there were loads of threads from posters looking for the lowest DSC.

I am also on a fixed Eon Next tariff  paying the same 7p DSC for both gas and electricity for an annex that is rarely used, and next year along, with everyone else, will face the same increase. The days of cheap energy are gone!

I was told, no idea if it is accurate, that the reason for the hike in DSC is that smart meters are now leased from a company and that is the going rate.

MWT

Nil consumption	Apr 2017 - Sep 2017	Oct 2017 - Mar 2018	Apr 2018 - Sep 2018	Oct 2018 - Mar 2019	Apr 2019 - Sep 2019	Oct 2019 - Mar 2020	Apr 2020 - Sep 2020	Oct 2020 - Mar 2021	Apr 2021 - Sep 2021	Oct 2021 - Mar 2022
DF	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
CM	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
AA	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	0.00	1.49	0.70
PC	6.70	6.70	7.11	7.11	7.28	7.19	7.36	7.05	7.11	6.98
NC	16.43	16.43	16.73	16.73	16.54	16.54	17.27	17.27	17.41	17.41
OC	39.66	40.17	40.75	41.10	41.57	41.88	42.11	42.23	42.46	43.24
SMNCC	0.00	-0.13	1.65	7.92	9.59	9.67	11.45	11.63	11.38	11.41
PAAC	3.42	3.47	3.52	3.55	3.59	3.61	3.63	3.64	3.66	3.73
PAP	0.30	0.31	0.32	0.35	0.36	0.37	0.38	0.38	0.39	0.39
EBIT	1.29	1.30	1.36	1.49	1.53	1.54	1.59	1.59	1.62	1.62
HAP	0.75	0.76	0.80	0.90	0.94	0.94	0.97	0.97	1.00	1.00
Total_GB average	68.57	69.00	72.24	79.15	81.40	81.73	84.76	84.76	86.52	86.48

This is from the Ofgen cap spreadsheet and shows only the standing charge component net of VAT.

SMNCC is the Smart Meter Net Cost Change component of the standing charge.

The table shows that the allowed cap for the standing charge has not suddenly increased in the last year and is currently less than £5 more than it was 2 years ago on an annual average basis.

So supplier changes in standing charge have more to do with how they chose to apportion their tariffs between standing charge and kWh charges than any fundamental shift in actual costs.

bristolleedsfan

Cardew said:

StephanA said:

I'm on a fixed tariff with E.On till January.... I expect the advice to be to accept their variable tariff ... but I have a problem with doing this ...
My current standing charge is 7p/day for each of Gas and Electricity... that is £51.10 per annum.

The new standing charge is 26p/day which leads to an annual charge of £189.80 ... a 370% increase!!!!

Currently my energy usage is very low  ... spending about £420 pa in total, including the standing charge.......I know the cost is going to go up for the energy use itself, .... but hiking up the standing charge (presumably to recoup the profits they would otherwise make) ....is just taking very unfair advantage ... Has anyone else had their bills unsuspectingly stacked in this way?

I was told, no idea if it is accurate, that the reason for the hike in DSC is that smart meters are now leased from a company and that is the going rate.

Ofgem published a proposal some time ago as regards suppliers charging same standing charge with figure of 25p per fuel mentioned in the name of being easier for consumers to compare tariffs. merely having to compare kwh rate.

wild666

StephanA said:

I'm on a fixed tariff with E.On till January.... I expect the advice to be to accept their variable tariff ... but I have a problem with doing this ...
My current standing charge is 7p/day for each of Gas and Electricity... that is £51.10 per annum.

The new standing charge is 26p/day which leads to an annual charge of £189.80 ... a 370% increase!!!!

Currently my energy usage is very low  ... spending about £420 pa in total, including the standing charge.......I know the cost is going to go up for the energy use itself, .... but hiking up the standing charge (presumably to recoup the profits they would otherwise make) ....is just taking very unfair advantage ... Has anyone else had their bills unsuspectingly stacked in this way?

Learn to turn everything off but the fridge, freezer and router unless you are using it. Personally I will be saving around 40% of the usage I had before Avro went under. The items include PC's, TV's, cookers, microwaves, lights, smart speakers in bedrooms that are only used at night as an alarm clock, games consoles, DVD/Blue-ray players, lights, shower light. In short if it's not in use then you don't want it using any electric, even in stand by mode. 

My usage with Avro was just over £500 per year but I did leave a lot of stuff on stand by mode, the SLoR, Octopus, rates are 20.01p and 3.91p  I cannot save a lot on gas but the electric I can save over £230 per year on by turning everything off at the socket, the stand by mode they give in the instruction booklets is nowhere near the usage they say it will use in stand by.              I have a device that gives out the usage of items plugged into it £7.99 on ebay or £14.99 from Amazon, and use it for my surge protector that has the desktop, monitor, printer, 2 external HDD and 2.1 speakers for the desktop. 

Turn off everything not in use and you will be amazed how much you can save compared to having everything in stand by mode. 

wild666

Standing charges are there to keep the supply lines working. That's what I am led to believe so I don't understand why there was a difference in the standing charges between suppliers.

savers_united

The standing charge is probably one of the fairest elements of energy bills.

As we all receive the same service via the power lines and pipes coming Into our homes expecting them to be maintained and upgraded when necessary through network providers it should be a fixed amount per property not really based on the amount of energy used, we should all be paying a minimum amount towards those costs.

With second homes and new highly efficient properties being built energy use for these is low, yet they still receive the same service from the network operator, so they should be contributing equally to those costs. 

matelodave

If you look at it logically, low users should pay at least the same if not higher standing charges as a high user as they contribute less with their lower consumption..

Presumably the supplier doesn't make as much money from the supply of product to a low user as he does a higher user but the infrastructure and service costs are the same.

You could argue that you should pay a service charge based on the distance between your house and the the generating or distribution node rather than having it evened out over the whole customer base.

I guess if we really paid the individual costs to supply gas, leccy or even a telephone line to each individual premises there'd be a many people who couldn't afford to have a supply at all. - just saying