Price cap - Standing charges

Mark_G

MWT said:

Mark_G said:

Does the price cap of 54% to start on April 1st 2022 apply to the standing charge aswell as the unit rate?

You flawed premise is causing you to misunderstand what is going on...

There is no 'price cap of 54%'.

You need to start at the other end of the process.

There is a table of caps which varies by region, payment method and metering type and limits the standing charge, and separately the total payable including the standing charge for a typical customer using a specific amount of electricity and gas.

On average across all the regions, for a customer paying by direct debit, using a single rate tariff for electricity, and consuming 2900kWh of electricity and 12,000kWh of gas the total of both bills will go up by about 54%.

Alter any one of those assumptions and it will not be 54%.

Ive been told what my new prices are and apart from my electric kwh, all the other charges have gone up by as low as 60% and as high as 90%

Currently my electric usage for last 12months is 1856kwh and gas is just over 7000, which are all well below those averages you mention. Im on smart meter pre-pay, standard tarif, for the last several years, and everytime i contact BG they say there is no better tarif for me.
Think they are robbing us, legally!

Treehuggger999

Just a general comment - of course with these horrific rises there is every incentive to save energy, however there would be a bigger incentive if there was no standing charge and the costs of supply was put on the unit rate. At the moment I will be paying £3.50 per week even if I sit in the dark and cold and use no electricity at all.

MWT

Treehuggger999 said:

Just a general comment - of course with these horrific rises there is every incentive to save energy, however there would be a bigger incentive if there was no standing charge and the costs of supply was put on the unit rate. At the moment I will be paying £3.50 per week even if I sit in the dark and cold and use no electricity at all.

It would not make any difference, even at the current prices, a typical user is only paying 10-13% of their total bill in standing charges, the remaining 87-90% is a more than sufficient incentive to reduce usage.

If you are a very low user already then there is little to gain by further reductions, but you should still contribute fairly to the cost of the infrastructure and the other levies recovered via the standing charge.