Standing charge for electricity doubled

norricorp

Hello,

I wonder if anyone knows why the standing charge for electicity should have nearly doubled - in my case from 24.11p to 43.39p a day.
I can understand why the price of electricity has increased - the fuel used to generate electricity has increased vastly. But why should getting the electricity to me have increased so much?

Interestingly the standing charge for gas has only increased by a penny; perhaps I should just be gas only and generate my own electricity (:>)
Regards,

John

[Deleted User]

Please carry out a search of standing charges. We really don’t need another thread on this topic. Standing charges for electricity cover a raft of other costs including the cost of supplier failures; the cost of the smart meter programme; WHD payments; taxes to get us to Net Zero.

MWT

Please just check one of the many other similar posts, typically about 3 a day at the moment.

Short version is the electricity standing charge carries all the various levies and in this case the important one is the charge to begin recovering the costs of the failed suppliers through the 'Supplier of Last Resort' scheme.

Curiousgirl1

Nope, no idea 

norricorp

Yes, I was being lazy.
I think the key point raised by MWT is the recovery costs of all of the suppliers that went bust. All of the other costs have always been there.
There does seem to be a lack of transparency as to what the standing charge is made up of. Perhaps the next scandel in the making?
Are there any suppliers that are known for having a lower standing charge?
And presumably all of the levies do not apply to the gas SC/

QrizB

norricorp said:

There does seem to be a lack of transparency as to what the standing charge is made up of.

All the factors that feed into the Ofgem cap are published.

See here: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/default-tariff-cap-level-1-april-2022-30-september-2022

I'm not sure how they could be more transparent, short of having a 30-minute prime-time TV show dedicated to them every six months? Carol Vorderman or Rachel Riley could front it.

EssexHebridean

QrizB said:

norricorp said:

There does seem to be a lack of transparency as to what the standing charge is made up of.

All the factors that feed into the Ofgem cap are published.

See here: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/default-tariff-cap-level-1-april-2022-30-september-2022

I'm not sure how they could be more transparent, short of having a 30-minute prime-time TV show dedicated to them every six months? Carol Vorderman or Rachel Riley could front it.

...or Martin Lewis, perhaps...

norricorp

Thanks for the link to ofgem.

But what is interesting is that assuming the wholesale component relates to the price per unit and the other factors(less the VAT) is the standing charge, then that remainder has gone up by about 16%. Yet the standing charge has nearly doubled.

Having said that, presumably the cap includes standing charges as well so perhaps it all balances out. For instance, my electricty unit price has increased by 40% yet the wholesale component from ofgem has more than doubled. With gas, the unit price has nearly doubled but the standing charge has increased by less then 5%.
Perhaps my supplier gets less power from gas or more profit from standing charges.
Not sure the cap was a great idea.And not really impressed with a loan that is paid off over the next five years.

EssexHebridean

As has been explained in the fourteen thousand other posts on this exact same subject, the increase in the electricity standing charge is mostly as a result of the SOLR process which has ensured that the many customers of companies which haven’t survived the past months aren’t left without heat, light or cooking facilities. It’s put onto the electricity SC because almost everyone in the U.K. has electricity, while not everyone has gas. 

As for the loan - easy solution is to withdraw the credit amount when it arrives in your energy account, stick it in savings, and then drip feed it back to the account at £40 per year once repayment starts. That way you can effectively have nothing to do with it. Simple eh?! 

t0rt0ise

Four posts saying the same thing. Are you simply advertising? If so there's no need as the supplier is already being discussed.

benparry1977

Sorry t0rtOise im a newbie on here and wasn't sure how it worked thanks for the heads up