Price Cap - Just announced

[swifttwist]

From £1971 to £3549. 80% rise. I have no words.

New figures:

Electricity
£0.52 per kWh
Daily standing charge: £0.46

Gas:
£0.15 per kWh
Daily standing charge: £0.28

This won't be much use to most people as most people like the annual amount spread equally over 12 months, but if instead you want higher bills when hyou use more power and less when you don't the Financial Times in an article today says " Not in debt to your supplier? You can ask for a variable direct debit where you only pay for the energy used that month, although these tariffs are not openly advertised." You tend to have to telephone your provider to move to this and it may be called something like "direct debit whole amount" or "Direct Debit with exact monthly payments". You then have to submit readings once a month.

Like amused I have regularly been contacted over the years to change the direct debit to request current use (it went down when the twins went to university and my older son moved out and only I was here) and then back up when the twins moved home.

Yeah they are totally different creatures!

I don't have either, but from what I've read on here, the over ones, you're better to go thin & cheap as they drape much better!

Pretty sure he was being naughty

I think you might be.

Did you see the Ofgem bloke interview this morning? The prices will not be going down anytime soon - that is what I got from it. They are going to bleed us all dry.

He spoke about protecting customers, (a complete joke) and he wanted Ofgem, energy companies and the government to work together. It left me wondering who exactly do Ofgem work for because it doesn't seem to be the consumers.

Maybe/maybe not, you don't know their situation.

but even if it costs the same, it's a nicer way to spend the money!!

Yes, I imagine you are. What on Earth makes you think that?

It doesn't matter if you control 90% even. France is far less reliant on imported energy, and yet it has the highest electricity price contracts in Europe now. Their nationalisation of EdF has put a massive liability on the books of the French people, who now own a lemon of a power company. Even if they get all their reactors back online soon (not promising given their recent memo), they still get exposed to a fraction of the international energy market. That means they still get into an auction for insufficient supply.

And also, how would you nationalise the energy market? Do you buy the producers and suppliers? The former is raking it in, but they're also massive companies and, as Venezuela and now Russia are finding out, just seizing assets from them ends badly. The latter are loss making, so they're a debt on your books. The market cap of the likes of Shell and BP combined is $300 billion, or about £254 bn. For context, EdF is not even $50 bn. and most of that company is debt now. Where does the gov't get this cash from without significantly affecting their credit rating with a tanking sterling? How do they incorporate the companies? Just the domestic arm, or the whole shebang? What if the shareholders say "go take a hike"?

There is nothing fast of easy about any of this. It will not stop the market induced pain being suffered now, nor will it save the gov't money except on far longer timescales than anyone is talking now. And as any psychologist will tell you, discounting factors into that, since we're all already talking about ditching climate pledges because we're now paying the true price for what cheap energy gave us.

@Goggin
yeah. Probably not the best day !!

I'm curious too. I'm seeing a lot of wishful thinking. People say it won't last long, because to imagine anything otherwise is too harmful to mental wellbeing for many. But it is flawed, because their theory is based on nothing but the avoidance of pain.

Unless someone has some insight we're missing, the notion that this is a six month temporary blip is sorely misguided. Even if Ukraine kicks Russia out of their lands, which is a monumental if, does anyone seriously think we haven't incinerated that bridge already with Russia and their exports? No hard feelings, Puty, just let us buy your gas and oil and metals and grain again, please?

@LittleLlama

its not a race to the bottom

Wow just wow

You lose

Grow up.

Unless Your husband is cradle snatching, I assume you're also around 60.

You're ever so funny trying to turn it around to me not understanding. You're the one whose husband is getting £6000 additional income in April, you're the one sulking that they might have to dip into savings to pay some of the electricity bill until then, then claiming to find it scary.

🙄🙄🙄

I understand £100 billion is alot to freeze the price cap for 2 years, but if as a country we are in £2.4 trillion of debt, what's an extra £100bn to save half of the country and economy. I'd happily pay more tax to cover even some of the shortfall.

if there are 27.8 million homes/households in the uk and the government has given 54 million to Ukraine - if you gave every household 2 million towards their fuel bills that Wouk solve the problem for more than 2 years

business would also have to be sorted but where does the 100 billion come from?

isn't 27m x 6000 (price cap for 1 year) 162 billion? billion as in 162 with 9 0's after it, which is what we call a billion now.

Now? You mean since the early/mid 1900s?

I did the MSE calculator can get a fix at £483!!!!! A month and the calculator is suggesting I strongly fix!!!!!!! Paying £165 atm due to go to £220.

I mean we could reduce our usage but really how much will that affect our bills? I don’t think we are excessive users.

large 4 bed semi, dreaded open plan area. Gas central heating.

we use 17800 kWh of gas?!

and 3744 kWh of Electricity.

i wfh 5 days a week. DH two days a week. Kids home from 4ish most days.

Found this. If you know your usage per year it gives an idea what OCT costs will be.

@ TooMuchToDoTooLittleInclination

You clearly have little appreciation of the situation or you would not be trying to insult those people you judge as not worthy of finding the increase in gas and electricity quite scary. Given your good financial position I guess that is kind of understandable.

Also, I did not say we will have to “dip into savings”, I said we will have to live on them. Given the high possibility that prices will raise again in January, they are likely to be long gone by April. But I am very fortunate to have them and my situation is not desperate like others on this thread.

I think those average usage figures will come down considerably this winter. Mine's well below all of them in a semi detached house and I'd still be extremely worried about the cost if I hadn't fixed for most of the winter.

Where are you getting £2 million per household from? That works out as £2 per household.

Same here although our DD is less. We were on a fixed tariff until May, always in credit, so we raised it £25 a month for starters, have barely used any gas in the warm weather, and have quite a big credit balance to take us into winter, when we know it will be expensive. The £400 will go some way to help, plus due to age we’ll get another £300.

We are a fairly low income (not much above pension credit) couple. Probably at the bottom of the squeezed middle. I already shower a few times a week at the leisure centre. Our home is fairly well insulated, and we have fleecy blankets, thermals and hot water bottles at the ready!

Alexandra2001 ·

yes, totally fucked up my maths - sorry

Again mildly unrelated but on a bigger picture quite a lot of our pension funds will be invested in these companies so technically we’re all mostly invested in their success long term unfortunately

Ha ha my maths is usually appalling, so you made my day to proven correct!

But the numbers are horrific and tbh there is nothing on earth to stop the price cap going far higher & for a v long time.

We need bigger ideas than just borrowing 300 billion to fix it, remember Furlough cost 53 billion.

sadly torys have taken away grants over the last ten years have gone, these grants were for green style energy items.

New houses could be all built with solar and ground source heating and if that had been happening over 10 years we would have a lot less energy to find.

troys stopped grants for insulation

Now we find ourselves in this position with utility unit prices increasing from 3p a unit to 15 p a unit for gas and about 19p for electric to 52p a unit

Businesses don't have the cap and are seeing bills go from £6000 a year to £70000 a year or that their supplier refuses to supply them any longer....

FGS give up trying to paint me as the one that has no understanding & has loads of money. Try reading your own posts.

At last you've admitted your position isn't desperate like many others. Finally. It took long enough, but we got there eventually.

Divide and conquer has always been a government tool. I don't think it helps anyone but the govt if sections of society turn on each other. The rises are scary for most people. Feeling safe with a cushion in the bank is nice but people can clearly see that cushion disappearing, the immediate horror is going to hit the poorest fastest but it will spread.

I'm a pensioner and my DHs carer. We can pay the increases at the moment but it is hard for us to cut back on usage due to DHs needs. Our fix ended in April so the change was a shock but we fixed so the October increase won't hit us although that means we have been paying above the cap since April. We paid the extra by DH giving up smoking, not easy after 60 years of smoking but it has helped. I'm already starting to worry about next April and yes that is luxury to someone who can't pay the increase in October but it doesn't alter the fact that I worry.

I struggled through the 70s with young children and a mortgage we could barely afford, I don't want to go back to that life, I don't want others to experience it. We could apply to the energy company for help but we know the grants are limited so we haven't as I'd hate a young family to miss out as we took the money. I just hope we can all be supportive of each other.