Price cap and relative gas/electric unit rates

pserve_p2

I’ve been a Cheap Energy Club user for many years.

Now we are in this energy price mayhem, I am finding it very difficult to get clear information about the consumer prices being charged and the various news stories (and Ofgem  press releases) about price capping. Unfortunately, Martin Lewis’s talks and blogs, etc. haven’t really clarified the problem. Here’s the problem I have: our house has no mains natural gas supply — we have only grid electricity and LPG cylinders just for our kitchen stove. Our electricity usage is therefore very untypical. We use 19500 kWh on average in a year and no “gas” at all (except obviously when we buy refilled propane cylinders). Annoyingly all the media discussion (and all the announcements and advice on MSE) refer constantly and exclusively to the “typical/average household energy bill” being capped at some figure … £1971, £3500, £2500 with the PM’s new price “guarantee”, etc. MSE and Martin Lewis do always state that “if you use more than average your bill will be higher” and that is obviously the case, since consumers are charged via tariffs which set a kWh unit rate. What I cannot work out is how I can translate the Ofgem price cap (or the new Govt price cap) into a meaningful unit cost for just electricity alone. To cap the “average” household bill (which is a mix of kWh from gas and kWh from electricity) at a bottom-line figure makes it impossible to work out what the relative unit prices of electricity and gas are.

Can anyone explain?

Anthear

Could you look at your past usage in terms of units used and then multiply that by the new capped unit rate?
ie I am in Southern area so my unit cost is 0.2846p and my daily standing charge is 0.434p per day.

MWT

pserve_p2 said:

What I cannot work out is how I can translate the Ofgem price cap (or the new Govt price cap) into a meaningful unit cost for just electricity alone. To cap the “average” household bill (which is a mix of kWh from gas and kWh from electricity) at a bottom-line figure makes it impossible to work out what the relative unit prices of electricity and gas are.

Can anyone explain?

Take a look here:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/what-are-the-price-cap-unit-rates-/#unitrates

... and do drop down the 'regional' sections to see your local pricing...

[Deleted User]

There is a specific list of the electricity unit rate and electricity standing charge caps - 

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/what-are-the-price-cap-unit-rates-/#accordion-content-01944182451-0

[Deleted User]

And for an explanation - there are actually five pages of different caps, it's just that the media like a single number for a headline.

pserve_p2

Hmmmm. Thanks Anthear for your suggestion. But I am puzzled by your reference to "the new capped unit rate": as far as I can tell, there is no specified "unit rate" in the Ofgem cap. That's exactly my problem. The cap doesn't specify a unit rate -- it always refers to a capped bill for a "typical or average" household usage. You say that in your Southern area the unit cost is 0.2846p. Is that what you're paying now, today, under the current Ofgem price cap? In October, when the price cap goes up to Liz Truss's £2500 limit, do you know what your unit cost will be? If you do your "past usage and multiply" process to work out a unit cost after October, then you're assuming that the relative price of electricity in relation to gas will remain constant. I'm not sure that is true.

The_Green_Hornet

[Deleted User] said:

And for an explanation - there are actually five pages of different caps, it's just that the media like a single number for a headline.

To be fair they were originally given that single number by the BEIS.

pserve_p2

Aha! OK, OK... sorry Anthear. The responses above (which came in as I was typing my comment) make it all clear. I didn't realise there was an MSE table of new price-capped unit rates broken down into separate gas and electric rates (and different regions). Great, that solves it. Thanks, everyone.