OVO Standing Charges

Eddie1738

Why are electricity and Gas Standing Charges different across this company tariffs.  Surely the standing charge should be the same across all their tariffs.
Standing charges I understand are meant to pay for govt Green levies, Infrastructure and Development costs so why should you pay a different charge to the same company depending whether you are on a fixed or variable rate

TheMilkmansDad

Refer to the sticky thread on the energy board regarding standing charges. All your queries will be answered there.

Scot_39

The Ofgem standing charge cap - and the key word is cap - the maximum - are only applicable to standard variable tariff - in Ofgem speak the suppliers default variable tariff.

Any tariff can charge less - Octopus were charging c2% below cap on both gas and electric default tariffs iirc - last year.

Any non default tariff - like fixes - can charge more - although few tend to.

Fixes have to have a marketing edge - price stability the most obvious one, but with many challengers - people came to expect cost savings in recent past (the big 6 often charged premiums for the stability - certainly on 2year deals. 

Suppliers know SC are unpopular with millions. 

And - from a company perspective - changing the SC fixes the relative cost shift for every customer - 5.5p on SC is c£20 pa - for every user switching to a fix regardless of use.

But the likes of EOnNext's loyaly v1 - with a larger SC saving (almost 50% iirc) - didn't seem to be widely offered. With it a low (import) user would gain if unit rates the same - but EOn would lose - as they still have to pay the fixed amount per customer to network operators.