And now the forecasters are saying the price cap could hit £6000

Woolsery

Sea_Shell said:

littlemissbossy said:

I was checking my energy bills yesterday, since last autumn we have been trying to cut down our usage:-

Aug 20-Aug 21 gas was 12192 kwh and electricity was 2739 kwh
Aug 21-Aug 22 gas was 8658 kwh and electricity was 2452 kwh

I felt quite chuffed with that but then remembered we had quite a mild winter. 

It'll be a kick in the teeth if we get a long dark cold winter, as like you say, if we look at the last 12 months usage in isolation, it my give us a "rose tinted" picture of our usage.

Better to have years of data to fall back on...but who has that?

We do, but our reduced usage is also partially down to a new boiler last July too.

Yes, the Aga went shortly after 2009/10 and the awful wood burner was updated too along with treble the amount of loft insulation. But I won't forget that winter in a hurry; ice forming in the bucket on the way to give the sheep a drink!

EssexHebridean

From what I've seen when out and about, it appears that a good number of supermarkets that were previously open 24/7 are now closing overnight. 

pochase

Yes, but that already happened before the energy crisis during lockdowns.

AlanGF1969

£6,000! Absolute scaremongering rubbish, with the likes of Daily Mail spouting this!!

pearl123

AlanGF1969 said:

£6,000! Absolute scaremongering rubbish, with the likes of Daily Mail spouting this!!

The original source was Auxilione.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/energy-bills-forecast-rise-april-b2150725.html

Aylesbury_Duck

AlanGF1969 said:

£6,000! Absolute scaremongering rubbish, with the likes of Daily Mail spouting this!!

Are you sure about that?  Only yesterday you were asking why electricity prices were high when we don't buy electricity from Russia, so I politely suggest you're not sufficiently knowledgeable about energy markets to know if it's scaremongering or not.

The DM is a rag, no doubt about that, but I'm sure that not very long ago there were people claiming that forecasted annual energy bills of £3,000 was scaremongering rubbish, and here we are.

deano2099

Woolsery said:

deano2099 said:

Woolsery said:

Helicopter money created from thin air, but that comes back to bite everyone later as inflation, because it wasn't earned by gainful economic activity. There's no free lunch.

That's true, but it has to be balanced against the option of "doing nothing". With something like COVID, or this energy crisis, "doing nothing" does not allow you to keep the economy in a steady state by default. Those crisis events are acting on the economy in their own way. Without the COVID support we would have had huge numbers of companies closing down, massive redundancies, leading to both those companies and their employees stopping paying tax, people defaulting on mortgages and other debts, and a massive strain on the existing welfare system. It's certainly possible that it would have cost us more, even in the short term, and would have had similar long term impacts.

I wouldn't advocate doing nothing, but studies of the lockdowns concluded they brought almost no benefits and countries like Sweden managed without, so whatever response is chosen to any black swan event needs to be a sound choice. I'm still puzzling where the idea of lockdowns came from, given they weren't in any pandemic planning prior to 2020. Even the WHO didn't recommend them for more than a short period.

However this isn't on topic, so I'll pause here.....

There's a book called "The Premonition" by Michael Lewis which covers this in some detail, but essentially there was a piece of work done in the 2010s about the efficacy of lockdowns in the 1918 avian flu pandemic. The prevailing wisdom had been they didn't work (because loads of people died) but some researchers collated population statistics, death reports and so on and found that areas where a lockdown had been implemented did see significantly fewer deaths. So yeah the answer is as weird as you suspect!

lindatoo

pochase said:

aoleks said:

pochase said:

Is the £64 a direct debit, or is it the bill?

If it is a summer month bill the average use will be most likely more £120. 

This £120 will go up by over 80% in October, now we are at £216 average. In January Auxilione predicts another 40% raise, so the £216 become £302, or over £3600 per year. That is low usage, but now that far of the £5000 as you believe. Just £120 difference per month.

What is your annual energy use in KWh for gas and electrcity?

that's the bill, we always provide a reading on the last day of the month and so the bill is always reflective of what we use.

electricity between December last year and August is around 1600KWh. gas for the same period is around 8800KWh.

we usually ask for quotes on 9000kwh gas and 4000kwh elec per year. but this is a lot, like I said, heating is literally on non-stop for 5 months a year.

Here is the forecast for October and January.

So you are at £239, with a few months of electricity and gas missing in January when the £5000 is predicted. Very likely that you will be near the £300 in average per month I suggested above.

That said you are a low user, using less than the average, but you are still nearer to the £5000 than you might have thought.

If you are using heating for 5 months non stop you must have an extremely well insulated property, something not everybody has, and many will use much more gas, for less heating time.

I used 7800 gas in the month Dec to Aug but for Aug to Aug I used 10700. Those missing 3 months can be quite cold so it is likely that the monthly payment will be about £300 as you suggest when you add in the VAT

chris1973

jobdone1 said:

People will take to the streets

Doubt it, they may miss Corrie or Love Island.

Woolsery

chris1973 said:

jobdone1 said:

People will take to the streets

Doubt it, they may miss Corrie or Love Island.

Protest isn't dead. People took to the streets over vaccine mandates in their hundreds of thousands last year. They were peaceful and their message  was inconvenient, so the mainstream media ignored them and the bulk of the population probably had no idea they were there.

If citizens start to freeze in their homes, miss meals and their basic entertainment, dark streets will offer the opportunity for rowdier, impromptu protests and it's likely to be a different demographic too. That might get noticed!

I'm not saying it will happen. I still believe the powers that keep folks on edge will pull some sort of a rabbit out of the hat; it's the number of strings attached to the rabbit that bothers me.