I understand the crippling increase in Energy prices but why the Standing Charge??

JasTaylor

As the title suggests I get (albeit hate) the increase in the energy costs due to world markets however I really dont understand why those same % increases are being applied to the Standing charges? In fact with the changes in the market place in the UK with the greatly reduced number of suppliers, shouldn't the opposite be true....i.e. I have been sent to BG, along with millions of others, meaning they have a greater number of customers contributing to their Infrastructure? I have obviously missed something or i just don't understand why my Standing charge is going to nearly double on the 1st April  .....any help to enlighten me will be greatly appreciated. Thank you Mark

MWT

Asked and answered on here many times recently, but the short version is that the capped electricity standing charge is increasing significantly due to an additional levy caused by the recovery of the Supplier of Last Resort costs resulting from the large number of supplier failures.

The gas standing charge is hardly changing at all.

bagand96

JasTaylor said:

As the title suggests I get (albeit hate) the increase in the energy costs due to world markets however I really dont understand why those same % increases are being applied to the Standing charges? In fact with the changes in the market place in the UK with the greatly reduced number of suppliers, shouldn't the opposite be true....i.e. I have been sent to BG, along with millions of others, meaning they have a greater number of customers contributing to their Infrastructure? I have obviously missed something or i just don't understand why my Standing charge is going to nearly double on the 1st April  .....any help to enlighten me will be greatly appreciated. Thank you Mark

The infrastructure to get the energy to your house isn't your supplier's (i.e. BG).  The supplier, and therefore the consumer, has to pay for it and the costs of the infrastructure are pretty fixed, they don't really vary between high and low users.


As above, standing charges don't just contribute to the infrastructure, it includes other mechanisms such as green levies and industry levies. For example did you have a credit balance transferred when you were moved from a bust supplier to a SoLR? Millions of people did and that money has to be recovered which is one of the levies built into the SC increase.