How by Stealth Government Nationalised Retail Energy Providers

[Deleted User]

Government online document Energy Price Guarantee: regional rates differ from what appears for example in Octopus October energy statements and is IMHO needlessly complicated.

For London the guaranteed electricity price (EGP) is £0.34093 per kWh.

The calculation less VAT is simply kWh x EGP which for 100kWh equates to 100 x 0.34093 or 34.093. The uncapped price is no longer relevant.

What Octopus have done in their billing is to subtract the guaranteed price from their uncapped price to state the difference as a lower guaranteed price.

At a stroke government simplified the energy cost calculation from providers leaving the uncapped price prospectively a private matter between provider and government. There is no way around this except to misrepresent the guarantee price in billing. The accuracy of billing however remains unaffected.

Did Octopus overcomplicate their billing?

MWT

[Deleted User] said:

Did Octopus overcomplicate their billing?

No, because at some point, possible as early as 1st April 2023, the EPG goes away and the billing will have to reflect the Ofgem cap at that time on the standard variable tariffs...

Better that people can see the real cap and the discount as two distinct numbers, so we don't get another round of people complaining that the prices went up massively, when in reality it is just that the EPG has ended...

Spoonie_Turtle

It's also in line with any other government help*.  The WHD is shown clearly as a credit, as it's the £66/67 EBSS (because they are the same amount paid to everyone who qualifies, it can just be shown as that).  So the EPG shown clearly also makes sense, so people can see exactly how much help they're getting.

*If I've understood the posts correctly.  I will note that I haven't actually seen it yet as Tracker electricity prices haven't required any EPG intervention so far this month, so my bills look the same as usual.