Energy price cap to rise to £2,800 in October: OFGEM Chief Exec

Alnat1

Buy shares in Damart now!

markin

Mstty said:

Benny2020 said:

Some people think because solar is not a complete answer then it is of no use what so ever.
My 3.5 kwh a day in January and December is enough to cover my daytime needs and at this time of the year my usage from the grid is down to 1.5 kwh a day. Also get £70 a month FIT payments.

But the people most affected by these price rises cannot afford solar. 

But the people that can afford it reduces the day time cost per MWH so everyone benefits.

fergie_

I had a look at the fixes I'm being offered - Gas at just under 12p per KW for 2 years and electric at 0.32666 with a higher standing charge on top.

When I do the sums, any potential savings are completely wiped out by 5 months at much higher rates than I would be paying now. Even worse are the early exit charges of £200 and £75 if the market does open up again.

The reality is that the only pragmatic solution is to reduce usage until the powers at be find a solution (unless you are fortunate to have a forest to burn and capital to invest in solar / wind / tidal).

I'd definitely advocate a government backed scheme to give to install as many decent panels as possible - ideally on a free basis - or at least heavily subsidised / cheap (non credit affecting loans).

For me the scary thing is that on current usage, my costs will have increased 700% (based on the October 22 estimates) in a couple of years. Not many people will be able to absorb these increases.

Mstty

markin said:

Mstty said:

Benny2020 said:

Some people think because solar is not a complete answer then it is of no use what so ever.
My 3.5 kwh a day in January and December is enough to cover my daytime needs and at this time of the year my usage from the grid is down to 1.5 kwh a day. Also get £70 a month FIT payments.

But the people most affected by these price rises cannot afford solar. 

But the people that can afford it reduces the day time cost per MWH so everyone benefits.

Not by enough it isn't. 

Fred2712

Looks like Martin’s advice not to Fix your rates at the end of last year is looking wrong….

Mstty

Fred2712 said:

Looks like Martin’s advice not to Fix your rates at the end of last year is looking wrong….

As well as a lot of misinformation here as well.

It really is a gamblers market right now, some will have won and some will lose big.

Thrugelmir

Benny2020 said:

sammyjammy said:

Benny2020 said:

We have massive amounts of oil and gas reserves here but local councils will not allow drilling/extraction.

Damn right they don't., long may it stay that way.

But you are happy to import oil and gas from Norway and Russia in polluting tankers?
It makes no sense.

Why do we import in containers from China. We can make "stuff" in the UK. People want cheap prices and have little concern for what they cannot see. 

polymaff

Does anyone give this speculation any credibility - especially with Ofgem's past record of being caught out by events?

Two relevant plots on Ofgem's site were last updated late March and last August..

See https://www.cliffordtalbot.co.uk/energy-prices/

Uxb1

Benny2020 said:

We have massive amounts of oil and gas reserves here but local councils will not allow drilling/extraction.

No we don't
The N.Sea started to wind down from around 2003 - it's now a busted flush
Fracking is not going to be the success it is in the USA due to our different geology of the deposits.

Look its really is simple
1. The "easy" deposits of oil and gas have been found and extracted, the rest to find and get are going to be very expensive, increasingly so as time goes on and are probably going to send the green lobby nuts.
Eventually one day, the world's deposits will run out totally.

2. The Green Lobby in the UK have screwed over the UK royally in the opposition to nuclear power. just think if we started 30 years ago we could have by now a whole succession of plants to replace the ageing early nuke stations. As already stated their is not a lot of solar and wind on a typical January day in the UK with an anticyclone high pressure zone sitting stationary over the UK.

3. To cap it off we close our coal industry down and go gas - this makes our enviro' credentials look wonderful as the pollution dropped enormously - but makes us very vulnerable to external supplies now that item 1 has occurred....not that anyone outside the power generation sector cared.

4. Finally we, as in the "West" now decide to pick a fight with a major supplier of our energy inputs (gas) - that being Russia.

You wait until you see food prices - food is grown with fertilizers as the only way to get the yield rate high enough to satisfy our needs - a major component in the production of fertilizer is gas
and that's before the antics in Ukraine and it's current non-supply of grain to the world.

As to the future it all depends how desperate we in the UK get.  I can forsee us re-opening the coal mines and going back to generating town gas from coal and sod the environment. That would get us 50 years until those reserves run out by which time hopefully fusion might have come good........yeah I know!

agentcain

Ultrasonic said:

Alnat1 said:

I reckon this is scaremongering by the energy companies so more people will opt for the oh so expensive fixed rates being offered.

It's not. This came from OFGEM, and there is a specific calculation that determines the new price cap rather than it being something that the energy supply companies concoct.

And yet the OFGEM has "warned", nothing is cast in stone. OFGEM once again doesn't provide much value. Warnings are great if you actually do something about them but I don't see what people who are on the receiving end can do much. Its not like any of us can run coal factories again, issue windfall tax or reduce VAT on demand, things that the government can actually do if they want to.