Electricity Daily Standing Charge.

Qyburn

Chrysalis said:

I probably shouldnt dive into this discussion as I am very anti SC and there is people on here who are very pro SC which is not a good combination, but from my perspective there is a number of issues here, one being that clearly utilisation has an impact on infrastructure costs, if we use less energy then less capacity needs to be built, yet we charge consumers infrastructure costs on a per property basis which takes no account of occupancy levels, income levels or usage. probably the least fair method possible but likely is supported as it lowers peak costs per household (which has political benefits) via cross subsidy from lower occupied households.  It wasnt always like this though, some of it was billed on units, Ofgem recently changed it.

I suppose you can imagine tiered standing charges based on supply capacity, with people on a 64A supply (like us) paying less than those on 100A. And introduce lower capacity connections as well.

But at a high level the push towards electric cars and electric heating probably means demand is going to increase rather than reduce. One DNO white paper said their distribution networks could on average only cope with one customer in five using an EV charger.

Content

All retailers have overheads, reflected in the prices they charge for goods and services. Customers would soon object if supermarkets and hairdressers made them pay a fee on entry, unrefundable if no purchase was made. Fuel is as essential as food and it should be the government's job to see that it is accessible to all, at the same cost,  from Lands End  to John O' Groats. Then let the different companies show us their true unit prices.  Only then will there be real competition and clarity fir the consumer.

EssexHebridean

The problem is that the insfrastructure cost isn't the same from Lands End to John O'Groats... 

MattMattMattUK

Content said:

All retailers have overheads, reflected in the prices they charge for goods and services. Customers would soon object if supermarkets and hairdressers made them pay a fee on entry

They might, but a supermarket or hairdresser operates in a fully competitive market, without price caps or restrictions on profit, and are not required to maintain a direct connection to your home to deliver food or hairdressing, an energy supplier is.

Content said:

unrefundable if no purchase was made. 

However, if you do not wish to have a connection to the grid and have your dwelling disconnected, they will no longer charge you.

Content said:

Fuel is as essential as food and it should be the government's job to see that it is accessible to all,

It is available to all, provided they pay for it, the same as food, or petrol, or clothing.

Content said:

at the same cost,  from Lands End  to John O' Groats.

The same cost does not make sense as there are significant differences in costs from one region to the next, this is reflected in the prices charged, just as it is also reflected in the price of petrol, diesel, food etc. 

Content said:

Then let the different companies show us their true unit prices.

They do show us their "true unit prices", the price they show you on your tariff is the price you pay.

Content said:

Only then will there be real competition and clarity fir the consumer.

There is already clarity for the consumer, all pricing is published and fully transparent, a daily standing charge and a unit rate. 

Scot_39

Ofgem produce and publish several spreadsheets to show how they arrive at the price caps - rates and standing charges by meter type and region.

Feel free to download and analyse at your leisure.

Or just accept that they have done it for you and published the heavily regional dependent rates - cheapest SC London, most expensive NW and Mersey followed closely by S Scotland and N Scotland iirc  - so spot the obvious geographical / housing density differences.

There are no uk universal prices on many other goods - food petrol etc - try shopping on a small Scottish Island for many if not all goods.

born_again

Content said:

All retailers have overheads, reflected in the prices they charge for goods and services. Customers would soon object if supermarkets and hairdressers made them pay a fee on entry, unrefundable if no purchase was made. Fuel is as essential as food and it should be the government's job to see that it is accessible to all, at the same cost,  from Lands End  to John O' Groats. Then let the different companies show us their true unit prices.  Only then will there be real competition and clarity fir the consumer.

There are many products/services in our daily lives we in effect pay a daily charge, whether or not you use them.
Council tax, phones both land line & mobile, TV licence. 
I could go on with many more.

Competition, look where that got the energy industry 20+ co's going bust & all of us having to pay extra via the standing charge to cover this cost of their failings.

matelodave

Perhaps s/c's should be based on the amount and type of infrastructure between your house and the generation facility., You could do it on a house by house or street by street basis or whether its overground or underground. 

What about the difficulty of maintenance, lets do it like insurance, based on risk and cost to repair or even how about a two tier system, whereby you pay a premium to get faults rectified immediately or just go on a waiting list until they can bother to get around to you. Or have a charge to get it sorted when it goes wrong.

What happens when there are storms like there were a year or so ago when whole areas were cut off for several days or even weeks. Would you have been happy, together with all your neighbours to get an extra bill to cover the cost based on the severity of the problem, or even worse not have it sorted out until you had paid up front.

The people in London wouldn't have cared a jot, because it didn't affect them and by implication wouldn't have had to contribute to the repairs

At the moment people expect compensation for an outage, rather than having to pay for it to be restored. Where do you think the money comes from.

bristolleedsfan

born_again said:

Content said:

All retailers have overheads, reflected in the prices they charge for goods and services. Customers would soon object if supermarkets and hairdressers made them pay a fee on entry, unrefundable if no purchase was made. Fuel is as essential as food and it should be the government's job to see that it is accessible to all, at the same cost,  from Lands End  to John O' Groats. Then let the different companies show us their true unit prices.  Only then will there be real competition and clarity fir the consumer.

Competition, look where that got the energy industry 20+ co's going bust & all of us having to pay extra via the standing charge to cover this cost of their failings.

SoLR costs are and have been for sometime £19 per year which equates to 5p per day, at least previously those costs had been spread somewhat between E SC and G unit rate.

Chrysalis

Qyburn said:

Chrysalis said:

I probably shouldnt dive into this discussion as I am very anti SC and there is people on here who are very pro SC which is not a good combination, but from my perspective there is a number of issues here, one being that clearly utilisation has an impact on infrastructure costs, if we use less energy then less capacity needs to be built, yet we charge consumers infrastructure costs on a per property basis which takes no account of occupancy levels, income levels or usage. probably the least fair method possible but likely is supported as it lowers peak costs per household (which has political benefits) via cross subsidy from lower occupied households.  It wasnt always like this though, some of it was billed on units, Ofgem recently changed it.

I suppose you can imagine tiered standing charges based on supply capacity, with people on a 64A supply (like us) paying less than those on 100A. And introduce lower capacity connections as well.

But at a high level the push towards electric cars and electric heating probably means demand is going to increase rather than reduce. One DNO white paper said their distribution networks could on average only cope with one customer in five using an EV charger.

I think someone on here mentioned something similar is already done overseas (might have been Dolor), they restrict your max KwH if you pay less SC.  Makes sense as lower demand customers put less demand on the grid, but also there has been some shifting by Ofgem recently which has moved more and more utilisation based costs on to the SC. 

Cant see it happening sadly, will be seen as too complex and a hard sell to those who would pay more from it.

There was another idea as well which I also liked if you use below a 0.5 KwH during the peak hours you get SC waived for the day.

Scot_39

You know it was far higher than that originally  - over £60 iirc - and £19 is still £19 too much - as paid for by all - not just those who benefitted from the too cheap to survive pricing at many.

Encouraged by woeful Ofgem regulation to improve market competition, without the financial reserves to play in a volatile business environment, and then arguably in part driven to wall by further Ofgem intervention - like the energy cap.

Ukraine wasn't the first energy crisis, its very unlikely to be the last. 
Ofgem forgot that by setting such a low bar for suppliers.