An idea to sort out this pricing mess

MA260

There needs to be action taken to reduce usage, united across Europe. An example would be to have rules on maximum temp in public buildings. Also going back to some of the pandemic measures such as Working from Home where people can , this would keep some offices closed in the coldest 2 months of the year.  Measures like these would apart from saving energy help bring the prices on the market down which are highly inflated by commodity markets speculating on the price

Alnat1

If 50 people are made to work from home, that's 50 houses being heated all day, rather than one office.

How does that use less energy?

Sea_Shell

Also, what happens if a WFH employee is on pre-pay, they can't afford a top up and their credit expires?!?

Hard to work from home with no electricity.

Catch 22

Section62

Alnat1 said:

If 50 people are made to work from home, that's 50 houses being heated all day, rather than one office.

How does that use less energy?

Depends whether you heat the whole house or just the room you work in.

The heat in the house when you'd normally leave for work isn't wasted.

The heat added during the day makes the house warmer at the time the heating would normally come on for the evening.

If you aren't driving to work (or the station) that's less fuel consumed (or electric if you have an EV)

The trains and buses with fewer people on board need less energy to accelerate each time.

Office space can be difficult to heat (and cool) efficiently compared to smaller domestic rooms (e.g. needing forced ventilation/aircon)

Offices have other energy hungry building service requirements, such as lifts.

Dimanche_Prochain

wrf12345 said:

You can buy an electric element from aliexpress for circa £3 inc tax and delivery, it is around 600W and you just stick it in a cup of water to boil it - it is surprisingly well made for the money and the only plastic is in the lead. No wasted heat or water.

At the moment you have three threads on pricing. One: the retail energy companies are vicious about making all the money back they lost when the price cap was mismatched to the wholesale price. Two: the government is letting them and Ofgem get away with this predatory pricing. Three: the net zero agenda means the govn wants people to use a lot less energy but not quite yet as they have a stake in getting that lost money back - see if the new govn has the guts to come clean. Gas prices should continue to go up, electric prices start to come down,

The combination of getting rid of standing charges and have a capped energy rate for the first tier of energy use is the way forward from April next year when the energy companies will finally be embarrassed by how much dosh they have extracted from the consumer and govn.

If I was sticking an electric element in a cup of tea, and it cost £3 from China, my last concern would be how much plastic was in it...

brewerdave

Latest Smart meter statistics report from HMG shows that at end of June , only 45% of domestic meters are operating in smart mode, with a further 7% being "smart" but operating in "dumb" mode. Still a long way off being able to introduce anything like the Spanish system.