British Gas price increase

Dackroyd

TheGardener said:

@Dackroyd You are definitely not alone - almost all the people I meet at work are struggling to understand why their monthly DD x 12 = more than £2,500 or, as their bills have never been over £2,500, don't think they will benefit from the cap. Both ideas are completely misunderstanding what the cap is. 

I don't believe the mainstream press or government has made any attempt to clarify what the 'cap' actually is. 
At the risk of sounding a bit basic - energy is sold in kWh units - like petrol is sold in litres. The cap is on the unit price, not the total bill. I was paying 2.8p per kWh last winter. In April '22 it went up to 7p and on the 1st Oct it will go up to 33p (give or take a fraction)  Without the government's cap, we were looking at gas being over 50p per unit and electricity was due to hit over £1 per unit. 
People understand units of measurement for most other things in life - kilos, litres, ounces - a kWh is just another unit of measurement but up to now most of us haven't taken much notice of them. Perhaps we are all going to have to get as familiar with the cost of a kWh of gas or electricity as we are with the cost of a litre of petrol. 

I agree with you, we have been oblivious for previous years as we have always been on a fixed and it’s always been the same until recently where we are no longer able to fix due to the situation, so now we and a lot more people are being considerate of what we use and how much each unit costs. It just feels over complicated at the minute as we adjust 

macman

OP, any energy saving measures you may have taken recently will not begin to cancel out the near doubling in energy prices in the last year-and now we have a further 27% hike coming on 1/10, even under the EPG.
Your usage patterns are odd though-about 50% higher leccy than average, but 50% lower for gas. Do you have gas CH and DHW, maybe a gas cooker?
Why is your electricity usage so high, assuming you have gas CH and DHW?

[Deleted User]

There's not really much of a drop on those graphs.  Looking at them, it seems the 'yearly usage' refers to how much used so far in this calendar year - which seems like a mad idea.

Would be easier to work out if you could write the kWh from each month rather than showing the graph.  The two numbers shown (for January 2022) equate to that month costing over £420 at Oct 2022 prices.

Dackroyd

macman said:

OP, any energy saving measures you may have taken recently will not begin to cancel out the near doubling in energy prices in the last year-and now we have a further 27% hike coming on 1/10, even under the EPG.
Your usage patterns are odd though-about 50% higher leccy than average, but 50% lower for gas. Do you have gas CH and DHW, maybe a gas cooker?
Why is your electricity usage so high, assuming you have gas CH and DHW?

We use an electric cooker and our central heating is a combi boiler so it’s ran on gas 

We cant think of anything that could be using more electricity other than what was stated with the hybrid at the start of the year and works being done for renovation but the usage is still less than last year 🤦‍♂️ We are only a family of 5 two of which are teenagers 

Coffeekup

Dackroyd said:

And I am unsure why there is that massive spike in January 

Maybe you just had a smart meter installed, maybe you never gave meter reading till January so pervious usage was under estimated.

Dackroyd

[Deleted User] said:

There's not really much of a drop on those graphs.  Looking at them, it seems the 'yearly usage' refers to how much used so far in this calendar year - which seems like a mad idea.

Would be easier to work out if you could write the kWh from each month rather than showing the graph.  The two numbers shown (for January 2022) equate to that month costing over £420 at Oct 2022 prices.

Electricity kWh pm
jan - 788.5
Feb - 577.5
Mar - 634.7
Apr - 453.5
May - 282.8
Jun - 257.8
Jul - 292.9
Aug - 319.5
Sep - 282.2

Gas kWh pm
Jan - 1797.5
Feb - 1315
Mar - 997.8
Apr - 688.3
May - 380.4
Jun - 167.4
Jul - 208
Aug - 216.7
Sep - 206.6

These are the figures from their app which has com from there smart meter 

[Deleted User]

So the totals it is showing you are the year-to-date totals and not rolling twelve-month totals.  That's useless.

If I invent some random numbers for Oct/Nov/Dec (300,300,300 for electricity and 700,1000,1400 for gas) - it would take your annual usage to 4800lWh electricity and 9100kWh gas.

At the October rates, that's an annual total of around £2900, so I think their estimations are a little higher than mine.  It's widely expected that this winter will be colder than last, however, so I may well have underestimated.  They will also have a bit extra in for me because of the high electricity use in Jan-Apr this year.

Nothing looks wrong with their estimates, but remember that it is only working out how much you pay into your energy account.  If it later ends up that you've used less than the estimate, you will be in credit and can either reduce your monthly payment or ask for the credit back.

As far as what more you can do - your electricity use is higher than average, and not just because of the hybrid.  I would suggest you have a look at where you are actually using electricity and work out where you can cut back there.  We can probably help with that.

Dackroyd

Cheers @[Deleted User], yeah we have been really digging into what we use and don’t use, turning off everything that is not being used, limiting the kids charging devices (constantly) Next on our list is the cooker and thinking of moving to a gas cooker as we cook alot and electricity being higher than gas and with gas being under used in the household it could balance it out maybe 🤷‍♂️

QrizB

Dackroyd said:

Cheers @[Deleted User], yeah we have been really digging into what we use and don’t use, turning off everything that is not being used, limiting the kids charging devices (constantly)

I know it's an obvious thing to think about, but charging devices like phones, tablets and laptops isn't a big cost.

My laptop is nothing special but has a bigger battery than any normal phone or tablet, 65Wh. Even so it only holds about 2p worth of electricity.

Focus on things that get (or make other things) hot or cold. Heaters, ovens, freezers.

gazapc

What QrizB says ^. Device charging is super minor.

In addition to the hot and cold things - you say you have two teens, any associated gaming consoles or computers?

Also seems to be a few threads recently of people with fish ponds & tanks consuming significant quantities of energy.