sky rocketing energy and cost of living bills-no help available

cj_gp22

after the £150 rebate and the £400 energy bill help, at the moment there is no other financial or product help ie new boiler or insulation etc for single people living on their own who work and do not qualify for any benefits. this is my situation having low income but savings that means i cannot apply for any benefits that are means tested and so, not receiving any of the qualifying benefits i will not get the £650 payment or the winter fuel help (Warm Front) from my energy supplier( EonNext) or probably any other financial help that the government makes available unless the £400 amount is increased.  Martin- can you advise people such as myself and the rest of the uk population facing a very bleak winter. many thanks and keep up the fantastic work .

FreeBear

cj_gp22 said: after the £150 rebate and the £400 energy bill help, at the moment there is no other financial or product help ie new boiler or insulation etc for single people living on their own who work and do not qualify for any benefits. this is my situation having low income but savings that means i cannot apply for any benefits that are means tested

On top of the £150 rebate that was handed out from April, there is also an additional discretionary rebate of another £150 - If you are earning less than ~£20,000 p.a. you should qualify - In multiple occupancy households, the cutoff point increases to some £30,000.

If you haven't already applied for it, you need to get a move on. I think the deadline for application is 30th August. Check your local council for a link to the application form. For mine, it was via https://www.grantapproval.co.uk/

dunstonh

Martin- can you advise people such as myself and the rest of the uk population facing a very bleak winter. many thanks and keep up the fantastic work .

Martin hasn't posted in the forums since he sold the site many years ago.

at the moment there is no other financial or product help ie new boiler or insulation etc for single people living on their own who work and do not qualify for any benefits

You could look at reducing your own energy use.  Some of which may not be at all difficult.   For example, we used 18kWh per day electricity pretty consistently during the warmer months (I have a log of monthly readings going back 4 years).    We have a device that we use in the winter that is particularly heavy in electricity, bringing that to 50 kWh a day.  We won't be running that device this winter.     

But we also looked at what was using energy and what we could do about it.  I found that idle that we were using around 250-350w as a running rate.  So, I turned things off standby and the running rate got to 64w.   So, now we turn nearly everything off at the switch when it is not in use.   

Nearly all lights are LED but we replaced some older LEDs with newer Philips LEDs.  We had some Chinese LEDs off Amazon  but I also replaced some of those as the light output (luminance) from the Philips bulbs was brighter at equivalent wattage.  We were able to drop to 2w bulbs in a number of places without compromising luminance.

We also looked at the energy use on white goods.  Our tumble drier is A+++ and used efficiently. So, no gain there.   The washing machine has been dropped 10 or 20 degrees on most washes and that saves a lot.  Longer programmes used but at lower heat results in less use.      The eco programme on the dishwasher was one of the biggest savings.     All these changes brought our daily use down from 18kWh to 12kWh.      I am replacing the dishwasher and fridge as neither were energy efficient (even the eco programme on the dishwasher was still using 4 times more than modern energy efficient models).   

So, basically, with a bit of monitoring using a geo Minim Energy Monitor  (i don't want a smart meter) and changing how we do things and some bulbs, we have knocked a third off our use.  I am expecting to get it just under 10kWh within a few weeks by changing some external lighting that is on overnight for security reasons and will be limiting some other significant external lighting that is not on for security but for convenience and luxury reasons (i.e. it is on for hours when no-one needs it).

So, look at your use, and you may well find you can make some savings there.