I wish I hadn't followed Martin's advice not to fix my energy deal

Alnat1

People who have a problem with their energy supply in some way come to this forum to try and get some advice.

It makes sense that there's not many posts saying everything is ok, I don't use much energy and I can pay my bills.

PennineAcute

I did not listen to Martin's advice late last year - and it would have worked if I had not had to move home.  Have not listened to him this time round, either, and tied into to a BG contract bid June.

Spoonie_Turtle

We were offered a fix of 41.4p/kWh (we're all electric) and at the time, I calculated based on the cap rising to 45p, although the feeling here was that it was more likely to be ~42p.  Savings were not guaranteed (our 2020 usage was less than 2021 so I calculated using both annual consumptions then an average) and it was really tight.  It was even possible we could lose money, overpaying before the rise and not saving enough after to recoup it all.  Especially if we can work out ways of reducing energy use over winter.

The quote given by the supplier with the fix was bang on the top figure Martin was saying might still be worth it, at the time (I can't remember what exactly it was, now).  So it turns out we should have taken his advice!

Now, of course, 41p is looking like a dream, but I had to act on the information we had at the time.  If I'd had a gut feeling and ignored it, I would be kicking myself, but I didn't.  I am slightly kicking myself for not taking what was at the time admittedly only a small risk, but whatever decision we make has to have my parents' buy-in - it's their house, I'm just able to deal with the energy for them to take one burden off while they deal with and do everything else - and at the time there was not enough to convince any of us that we would save money.  We are fortunate that we should be able to absorb the costs though, thankfully.

ariarnia

Imperial1847 said:

Reading a lot of these threads and loads of people seem to be using way above the "average" use, you have to question if the stats given for average use and deliberately misleading.

last year we used about half of the 'average' use. that's probably why it;'s an average 

pochase

Imperial1847 said:

Reading a lot of these threads and loads of people seem to be using way above the "average" use, you have to question if the stats given for average use and deliberately misleading.

Average means that there are people who are using more, and there are those who use less.

Many of those who hardly use anything you won't see here. You will more often see those with a very high usage.

Apart from that, average usage is meaningless, only you own usage counts.

Sea_Shell

On the point of "average" or "typical" user etc.

How often is this reviewed/calculated?

Surely, over the next 12 months, nearly everyone (unless money is no object) will be trying to shave some kWhs off their usage, with some making (or having to make) huge changes.

So today's average is probably higher than the equivalent average will be this time next year.

This could create an artificial lowering of the reported cap, unless they keep that metric unaltered.   The devil's in the detail 😉

pochase

I doubt that it will be recalculated.

The average 12000/2900 used by Ofgem was never the average UK user, cannot be because how do you want to calculate alone the possible variations as how many bedrooms, detached, flat, terraced etc.

The 12000/2900 is just a calculation method that is used to calculate the cap to have one single amount. It does not matter if the average is correct to high or to low, as long as you stick with the agreed numbers, that allow a one amount comparison between caps.

If you would recalculate it every few months you can no longer compare the cap figure by saying £1957 to £3500. It would be £1957 to £2500 because people are saving energy, and that would be very misleading.

ariarnia

google found this saying they what the average groups were (more than the one) how they were worked out and that they were being reviewed. that's from 2013 though. might be something more recent but that was the first result in google asking how do ofgem work out average use

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/2013/06/beyond-average-consumption-summary-doc_updated-june13_0.pdf

Alnat1

Sadly energy saving needs to be planned before we hit winter and the majority of people in this country don't read forums like this. They vaguely hear stuff on the news but it doesn't really sink in how this will affect them.

Add in that some of the big energy companies only bill 6 monthly, many will get an autumn bill showing summer usage and think they are fine. Come next spring, with further rises, a lot of folks are going to be very shocked when they receive the next bill and DD review.

The government should make available some kind of fuel calculator using the predicted SVT on a gov.uk site and advertise (leaflet through every letterbox?) so everyone can easily put in their figures and see what costs could be. Maybe ML could sort one on MSE too (when Oct figures released) and yell about it on telly.

pochase

Alnat1 said:

Sadly energy saving needs to be planned before we hit winter and the majority of people in this country don't read forums like this. They vaguely hear stuff on the news but it doesn't really sink in how this will affect them.

Add in that some of the big energy companies only bill 6 monthly, many will get an autumn bill showing summer usage and think they are fine. Come next spring, with further rises, a lot of folks are going to be very shocked when they receive the next bill and DD review.

The government should make available some kind of fuel calculator using the predicted SVT on a gov.uk site and advertise (leaflet through every letterbox?) so everyone can easily put in their figures and see what costs could be. Maybe ML could sort one on MSE too (when Oct figures released) and yell about it on telly.

To be able to use a fuel calculator you need to know how much energy you use in the first place.

I would say that 80% of those asking a question here just come in with some amounts, and many of them even after been asked have no idea how much they use, or how to get the information.

If it would be that easy we could just put up one of the spreadsheets some of are using and just update the predictions every few days. I doubt that will work very well.