Guide: What are the price cap unit rates?

Zoobzi37

BG increased my monthly duel fuel variable rate DD a few weeks ago from £86 a month to 195 a month.
I cannot work out the bills and how they arrive at such figures. I have a memory impairment and struggle to remember such details. BG did attempt to tell me how to read the bills but I forgot straight away.
My BG DD has been fixed for the next 6 months at 195 and I won't be accepting that. I've no idea how to proceed though or of BG will reduce this amount now the new rates are out. 
My account is £6 in debt after my last payment.
My father age 86 also can't make sense of his BG bills. They are so convoluted.
I've seen some other posts in this thread with a myriad of figures. I have no idea what these mean or make sense of any of it. 

[Deleted User]

Zoobzi37 said:

BG increased my monthly duel fuel variable rate DD a few weeks ago from £86 a month to 195 a month.
I cannot work out the bills and how they arrive at such figures. I have a memory impairment and struggle to remember such details. BG did attempt to tell me how to read the bills but I forgot straight away.
My BG DD has been fixed for the next 6 months at 195 and I won't be accepting that. I've no idea how to proceed though or of BG will reduce this amount now the new rates are out. 
My account is £6 in debt after my last payment.
My father age 86 also can't make sense of his BG bills. They are so convoluted.
I've seen some other posts in this thread with a myriad of figures. I have no idea what these mean or make sense of any of it. 

You are in debt at the start of the season that you will use the most energy.  This means that your old DD was not enough - even before any price rises.  The suppliers are supposed to try and have you in about two month's credit at this point so that you don't have a massive debt in the spring.  You will have a larger-than-expected DD at this time to try and put you back in that position.

Look for somewhere on your bill that says "estimated annual usage" or find two bills that are a year apart and write down the meter readings.  Write down your rates for each fuel.  Bring them back here and we can tell you what a sensible DD should be once things have stabilised.

Zoobzi37

My yearly usage for electric was 1598kwh for last 12 months. Even though I am on a smart meter, my phone app says they don't have the any information for yearly usage of gas. 
Sorry 
I don't get any paper bills whatsoever. 

I can't make sense of the app either. The figure quoted was for the first 6 months of the this year. The app is rediculous as it says yearly usage.
For 2021 the full amount was 4207kwh for electric. There's absolutely no information for gas usage 

BUFF

Can you manually read the gas meter & check how that reading compares to what is on your gas bill in the online portal?
It sounds like they will be estimating so they could be underestimating or overestimating your bills.

Zoobzi37

It's a smart meter so surely it's read at source.

I have no idea how to read the meter or what any of the stuff on it means. Sorry. I had the smart meter so I wouldn't have to read them myself.

I can't check tonight as the meter is outside. I am out tomorrow but can look on Thursday but I have no idea what I'm looking at.  

[Deleted User]

That amount of electricity is about £60 per month on the new cap - and 'the typical user' consumes 4 times as much gas as they do electricity - which on the new cap would cost you about another £60 per month.  So at a really rough guess your DD should be about £120 per month.

People use a lot more gas in winter than in summer, something like 5 times as much each month.  You should be roughly £200-£300 in credit at this point, so the extra on the DD is to make up for this.

The amount of your DD looks reasonable to me from what you've told us here.  They're never exact, and of course the supplier would rather have you in credit than in debt.

You could choose to move to variable DD, where the amount you pay each month is exactly what you have used - but that could mean you have to pay £40 in summer and £300 in winter, and you would have to budget for that change.

gsf600y

MSE_Chris said:

The energy price cap is misnamed – there’s no cap on how much you pay.

It's totally not misnamed.  It's misreported.  Media talk about a price cap, then in the next sentence start mentioning something completely different, which is the "typical usage" number.
I understand they're trying to put things into perspective for people, but the problem is that "typical usage" is irrelevant and probably hugely alarming for a lot of people.
Additionally, if we actually started to talk about how much suppliers charge for standing charges and pence per kWh, people might start to ask "how much kWh does my tumble dryer use then?", and actually get some idea of how much things cost to run.

It's a bit like saying "the cap on petrol prices is going up, taking the annual petrol cost for typical white van man to £3500", but not telling us what the price of petrol is actually rising to.  Probably a bad anology

Zoobzi37

My actual usage of gas is very low. BG actually reduced my dd from 95 to 86 a year ago.
There's absolutely no way I am going to pay 195 a month. I can't afford it and I don't use that much.
I am 6 in debt For the last 6 months.
Let's see what BG come up with but I am not paying 195 when the increase around 27%.
Thanks anyway
If my electric usage is around 60 a month under new figures then I am not going to pay 135 a month for gas. The only gas I use is for central heating and I use it sparingly. Using 135 a month wouid make my house a relative sauna.
In the past my electric bills have been around 4 times higher than gas. 

[Deleted User]

I don't think you're getting it.  You're £6 in debt across the cheapest 6 months of the year, and the prices are about to go up.  Even if the prices weren't going up, I would expect your DD to have gone up by £30 or so just because of the seasonal effect.

£90 existing + £30 seasonal = £120 per month.  Include the price rise and you get to £150 or £160.  You might get them to accept that as a new DD amount, but I wouldn't expect less. 

You can't just say to them "I don't think I should pay that much" without actual evidence - which you don't seem to be able to find.

[Deleted User]

You will, of course, get £66 or £67 refund for the six months from October - so that puts your effective payment back down a lot nearer what it is at the moment.