Standing charge on energy bills

Krakkkers

£14 a month? its £24.22 for me. 79.42p per day.

powerful_Rogue

Krakkkers said:

£14 a month? its £24.22 for me. 79.42p per day.

I did say on average. Mine is 45.57p per day.

Krakkkers

Is that for duel fuel?
I pay 50.31p for leccy and 29.11p for gas.

sevenhills

MattMattMattUK said:

sandyides said:

Anyone else like me appalled by the escalation of the daily standing charges being applied to energy bills? So even if you don't use any energy at all, you'll still have an increasing bill.
There was a time, not so long ago, when there were no standing charges. Can we revert to that please?
Is it worth a petition?

Some people are getting upset about it, but no one being rational about it is appalled. The Standing Charge pays for one's connection to the grid, the maintenance of that, the infrastructure and the systems in place, including the social provision imposed by the government, so long as one has that connection one pays. There was a time when the costs were front loaded onto the first few units, that meant that low users were subsidised by average and higher users, it would be illogical to revert to that system.
No it is not worth a petition. 

We seem to be getting social tariffs on some services and we also have legally binding net zero targets. So high energy users paying more seems to be sensible.

matt_drummer

sevenhills said:

 So high energy users paying more seems to be sensible.

High energy users do pay more.

MattMattMattUK

sevenhills said:

MattMattMattUK said:

sandyides said:

Anyone else like me appalled by the escalation of the daily standing charges being applied to energy bills? So even if you don't use any energy at all, you'll still have an increasing bill.
There was a time, not so long ago, when there were no standing charges. Can we revert to that please?
Is it worth a petition?

Some people are getting upset about it, but no one being rational about it is appalled. The Standing Charge pays for one's connection to the grid, the maintenance of that, the infrastructure and the systems in place, including the social provision imposed by the government, so long as one has that connection one pays. There was a time when the costs were front loaded onto the first few units, that meant that low users were subsidised by average and higher users, it would be illogical to revert to that system.
No it is not worth a petition. 

We seem to be getting social tariffs on some services and we also have legally binding net zero targets. So high energy users paying more seems to be sensible.

Higher users already pay more. As for net zero phasing out gas for domestic use and transitioning to large amounts of nuclear generation with additional renewables is the only way to do that. Social tariffs are an awful idea, so I suspect the government to push ahead with them.

Bigphil1474

Personally, I don't think the problem is with standing charges as such, but that it seems energy companies can make up any standing charge they want. I pay 26p a day on each energy, which is about 15% of my monthly bill. I'm not concerned with that amount. However, if they increased it to a £1 or £2, what can I do about it other than change provider which is currently a limited option. Seems to be a potentially new way to hoodwink customers, bring unit prices down but push standing charges up to maintain profitability? If they all do it, then competition becomes irrelevant. Maybe the solution is to tie standing charges to unit cost, or scrap them and add a % on the bill to cover costs. I do think they need to be regulated some how though.

matt_drummer

Bigphil1474 said:

Personally, I don't think the problem is with standing charges as such, but that it seems energy companies can make up any standing charge they want. I pay 26p a day on each energy, which is about 15% of my monthly bill. I'm not concerned with that amount. However, if they increased it to a £1 or £2, what can I do about it other than change provider which is currently a limited option. Seems to be a potentially new way to hoodwink customers, bring unit prices down but push standing charges up to maintain profitability? If they all do it, then competition becomes irrelevant. Maybe the solution is to tie standing charges to unit cost, or scrap them and add a % on the bill to cover costs. I do think they need to be regulated some how though.

It is regulated, the suppliers don't set the standing charges themselves, they keep none of it and they don't make any profit from them.

MattMattMattUK

Bigphil1474 said:

Personally, I don't think the problem is with standing charges as such, but that it seems energy companies can make up any standing charge they want.

They cannot, standing charges on SVT are set by Ofgem, on fixes they can charge what they want but it is the customers choice to accept those or not.

Bigphil1474 said:

I pay 26p a day on each energy, which is about 15% of my monthly bill. I'm not concerned with that amount. However, if they increased it to a £1 or £2, what can I do about it other than change provider which is currently a limited option.

The key point is that "they" cannot just increase it. The Standing Charge, how it is constituted and what is allowed to be included in the SVT is quite specifically laid out, it will likely not move much higher than where it is and may drop back somewhat, depending on what happens with the Bulb costs. For Fixes they can charge what they want, but that is market driven, you choose the tariff that benefits you with a combination of Standing Charge and Unit rates. 

Bigphil1474 said:

Seems to be a potentially new way to hoodwink customers, bring unit prices down but push standing charges up to maintain profitability? If they all do it, then competition becomes irrelevant. Maybe the solution is to tie standing charges to unit cost, or scrap them and add a % on the bill to cover costs. I do think they need to be regulated some how though.

Profits are capped, it is not a way to "hoodwink" customers, customers can choose which tariff they want to be on, the energy suppliers cannot use standing charges to increase profits.  Scrapping standing charges means that low users get subsidised and do not contribute to the upkeep of the network that they are connected to, which is why standing charges exist so scrapping them is an awful idea. 

sevenhills

Just imagine putting £50 of fuel into your car and they add another £20 for the cost of running the petrol station?