Gas and electricity bills to soar

[Cosmos123]

This is worrying as it will push many into fuel poverty.
Rising food prices and empty shelves.
Is anyone worried?

The gas boiler ban is only for new builds, corvid, so you will be ok for a while!

@OhYouBadBadKitten

You can see live generation mix by fuel across most European countries here:

m-transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGenerationPerProductionType/show

But yes, there are other countries where gas is the main generation source - Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Hungary, Greece.

But power prices are high even in Norway which is 100pc hydro - why is that? Because there is a single market for electricity so Norway will be able to export power to other countries where the price is higher, lifting demand for its power and the price.
Countries cannot blockade their power and gas supplies to prevent exports to their neighbours to keep their own prices lower. It makes the market more efficient overall - power flows to where it is most needed, limited only by physical capacity.

The issue is that gas is expensive and most countries use at least some gas - the market cost of power is the marginal generation cost. If you stack up all power plants from cheapest to most expensive, the marginal cost is what the last plant is that is needed to meet demand

In most of Europe, that plant will be fuelled by gas (even if they have lots of nukes like France) hence high prices every where.

Remember the government has a choice - it chooses to put this levies and taxes on household power bills because people don't realise they are there. If they really wanted to help the poor, they'd reduce levies and taxes on bills and pay for it out of the more progressive general income tax instead.

I don’t get this
We have a 4 bed 2 bathroom
3 of us in the house and 90 percent of the time
Someone is always in the house

We pay £20 a week electric on a key meter EDF
And £15 a week Gas British Gas on a pre payment cars I have a fear of debt from when I was skint and I know it’s more expensive on a key metre I prefer if as I can’t go into any debt
We put the heating on when we want
We have showers when we want
We pay the same amount year round so even in the summer when the gas and electric are low usage it builds up for the winter usage
Ours seems ridiculously cheap compared to other

Claudethecat thanks for the Martin Lewis videolink.

He is just so great. ML for King or PM, I say.

@mumoftinyterrors

My husband, who works in the energy market, has just told me that Utility Point and People's Energy customers are being transferred to British Gas. Bloomberg are just announcing it.

Highly predictable as they have some of the most expensive tariffs 🤦🏼‍♀️

I got transferred to BG from Simplicity when they went bust in February, transferred out immediately to People's Energy and now I'm headed straight back!

@Claudethecat

The gas boiler ban is only for new builds, corvid, so you will be ok for a while!

Oh that’s a relief!

That is actually quite a lot wegobshite. £1800 per year?

@CovidCorvid

That’s a good point about air source heat pumps, etc. I believe they’re only meant to be efficient for certain types of housing. The govt are planning on banning the sale of normal gas boilers in the near future and forcing people to have these instead.

Which will cause my energy bills in a 100plus year old house with no cavity wall to rocket. Bad enough if electricity is cheap, terrible if the price per unit is through the roof.

We have a large house built in 2019 that is very well insulated but the thing with heat pumps is that they don't kick out as much heat as a conventional gas heater system. My hot water never reaches above 50 degrees and my heating sits around 22 degrees. I used to whack the thermostat up to 30 degrees in my old house so I'm freezing here 🥶

We were given all the chat about heat pumps being the way forward, low energy usage, solar panels will offset the cost of heating the house, etc etc but I certainly don't find that true.

And this week our heat pump developed a series of faults and I couldn't find anyone to come out and look at it. There just isn't enough people trained to install and service these systems. How can the government expect all new homes to have these by 2030 when no one knows how to fix them when they go wrong?!? 🤦🏼‍♀️

@Wegobshite

I don’t get this We have a 4 bed 2 bathroom 3 of us in the house and 90 percent of the time Someone is always in the house We pay £20 a week electric on a key meter EDF And £15 a week Gas British Gas on a pre payment cars I have a fear of debt from when I was skint and I know it’s more expensive on a key metre I prefer if as I can’t go into any debt We put the heating on when we want We have showers when we want We pay the same amount year round so even in the summer when the gas and electric are low usage it builds up for the winter usage Ours seems ridiculously cheap compared to other

Darling, stop doing this.

Go to pay monthly like everyone else.

Budget.

@Wegobshite

I don’t get this We have a 4 bed 2 bathroom 3 of us in the house and 90 percent of the time Someone is always in the house We pay £20 a week electric on a key meter EDF And £15 a week Gas British Gas on a pre payment cars I have a fear of debt from when I was skint and I know it’s more expensive on a key metre I prefer if as I can’t go into any debt We put the heating on when we want We have showers when we want We pay the same amount year round so even in the summer when the gas and electric are low usage it builds up for the winter usage Ours seems ridiculously cheap compared to other

I currently pay £120 a month on a 3 bed semi. Which I guess is similar to your £160 ish a month on a 4 bed house. But I bet if you were to look for a fixed deal now you’d find yourself paying a lot more. And if you’re currently on a variable rate expect it to go up soon. My new fixed rate I’m currently moving to is more expensive than my current variable rate….but hopefully I will be protected from ongoing rises.

@Wegobshite You're paying £152(1) per month - that doesn't seem "ridiculously" low.

(1) (£15 + £20) * 52/12

@Wegobshite

I don’t get this We have a 4 bed 2 bathroom 3 of us in the house and 90 percent of the time Someone is always in the house We pay £20 a week electric on a key meter EDF And £15 a week Gas British Gas on a pre payment cars I have a fear of debt from when I was skint and I know it’s more expensive on a key metre I prefer if as I can’t go into any debt We put the heating on when we want We have showers when we want We pay the same amount year round so even in the summer when the gas and electric are low usage it builds up for the winter usage Ours seems ridiculously cheap compared to other

That only seems cheap because you are thinking in weekly terms.

You are paying £152 a month. Which is probably right given the size of your home and the amount of occupants.

We pay £95 a month but have just fixed (as in the last 2 minutes!) for £125 pcm.

Maybe you should look at fixing and DD options now?

I don’t understand how everyone says British Gas is soooo expensive. Every time those energy people come knock they can never find me a cheaper tariff. Even a couple of week ago no online comparison sites could get even within £90 of British Gas and the worst was going to be over £500 more and that was estimated that was based off my KWh usage.

Could be that the electricity price varies regionally, and counterintuitively, it's more expensive to get gas from the gas company than the electric companies and electric is cheaper from the gas companies than the electric companies. Makes perfect sense, I know . Also people have different gas/electric splits that will probably skew results.

We use less gas than average and more electricity because, while we have GCH, we have an electric shower, oven and hob, and dishwasher, so our gas/electric ratio will be very different to someone who has their shower coming off their boiler, no dishwasher so heats their washing up water with gas and a gas oven and hob.

The point I'm trying to make is that the company that's expensive for one household may not be for another and there's often a simple reason for this.

I don't understand all the angst about direct debit debts. They never ask for the money back in one go, they just up your payment a bit.

Keep your own records on usage - if you CBA converting to an annual cost, any of the comparison sites will do this for you if you tell them what tariff you're on and how much you use.

Then just keep an eye on things and if it's going too far either way, ask them to change your payment accordingly, remembering that the utility companies generally like you to be at zero in the early summer, to build some credit up in preparation for using it up over winter, to get back to zero credit/debt a year later.

@Horst

I don’t understand how everyone says British Gas is soooo expensive. Every time those energy people come knock they can never find me a cheaper tariff. Even a couple of week ago no online comparison sites could get even within £90 of British Gas and the worst was going to be over £500 more and that was estimated that was based off my KWh usage.

We are with BG, it was the best deal of the energy companies I had heard of and the time before when we were with them it was lower than everywhere else, didn't want to go with a unknown this last time for reasons like what has happened now, its a PITA if they go out of business and you get passed to another company. I also use some of the rewards like the 5 days free electric and hive discounts.

@Notlabeled

Almost as if spaffing billions of pounds on windmills that don't turn without wind was a bad idea. Hopefully this will show the lie of the green lobby that renewables will lower the cost of energy for everyone while keeping the lights on. If only the UK was sat on top of huge reserves of natural gas that could provide cheap and reliable base load energy....oh wait, it is. I hope all those who opposed fracking are gonna enjoy the huge increases in energy prices, when we could of been totally self sufficient in energy. Let's not forget the increase will also hit business and make our manufacturing even less competitive and cost jobs and increase prices in shops even more. Hyper inflation here we come!

I wouldn't worry about lack of turkey for Xmas, you probably won't be able to afford to cook it, even if the power is still on by then.

We are off buy a diesel generator, it won't make Greta very happy but at least I won't be sat in the dark.

Absolutely this ^. The green lobby is responsible for this shit. I am so angry .

@Wegobshite as others have said, at £152 per month, that's normal - if not a bit high?

For comparison, I am in a newish 4 bed, 2 bathroom hourse with 2-3 adults home all day and we pay around £142 per month. That's with the washing machine, dishwasher and oven almost always on (so it seems!).

I think our usage is on the high side of normal.

Yeah we've always found British gas very reasonably priced, more reliable too.

[quote MojoMoon]@OhYouBadBadKitten

You can see live generation mix by fuel across most European countries here:

m-transparency.entsoe.eu/generation/r2/actualGenerationPerProductionType/show

But yes, there are other countries where gas is the main generation source - Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Hungary, Greece.

But power prices are high even in Norway which is 100pc hydro - why is that? Because there is a single market for electricity so Norway will be able to export power to other countries where the price is higher, lifting demand for its power and the price.
Countries cannot blockade their power and gas supplies to prevent exports to their neighbours to keep their own prices lower. It makes the market more efficient overall - power flows to where it is most needed, limited only by physical capacity.

The issue is that gas is expensive and most countries use at least some gas - the market cost of power is the marginal generation cost. If you stack up all power plants from cheapest to most expensive, the marginal cost is what the last plant is that is needed to meet demand

In most of Europe, that plant will be fuelled by gas (even if they have lots of nukes like France) hence high prices every where.

Remember the government has a choice - it chooses to put this levies and taxes on household power bills because people don't realise they are there. If they really wanted to help the poor, they'd reduce levies and taxes on bills and pay for it out of the more progressive general income tax instead.[/quote]
Thank you so much for that explanation. Really clear and interesting. Who knew that energy markets could be so fascinating - even if it is for rather dire reasons.

May I ask another question please? How does the eu internal energy market play into this? or does it not?

Will admit not read all posts but as I understand things: New builds must not use conventional boilers after 2025. Sale of conventional boilers will be banned in about 6 years time.

@lonelyapple is right about the fault of the 'green looneys' because they have persuaded Mrs Boris to rush into banning fossil fuels too quickly. Industry needs more time to build new heating methods.
There is another lie about fracking, most of UK oil and gas will not need to be fracked (Different geology) and if fracked it does not need chemicals. Only water or sand and water. The oil reservoirs are well below the water table so no danger of that water getting to drinking water. We have the strictest enforcement in the world.

For too long we have got used to things being cheaper than they should be. Everything across the world is increasing in price. The way we live is going to have to change.

Unfortunately for many it will be going back to the 70s seeing breath when you wake up, wearing scarves and fingerless gloves inside, Maybe not having TVs on in every room, not having loads of devices on charge,one pot cooking.

Had a look and sainsburys are cheaper for me
Would you switch from bulb or hang on?

@NotMyCat I'm thinking exactly the same thing!

I'm currently in credit and wondering whether to stop the October direct debit as the credit we have will cover the bill. So at least if they do go pop I won't have to wait for the credit, I've been here so many times before.

[quote DontGiveAFlyingFig]@NotMyCat I'm thinking exactly the same thing!

I'm currently in credit and wondering whether to stop the October direct debit as the credit we have will cover the bill. So at least if they do go pop I won't have to wait for the credit, I've been here so many times before. [/quote]
I've jumped
Sainsburys have cheaper standing charge and cheaper unit prices, plus they were offering 6000 nectar points, triple points every time you shop (I use them) and a fix for 1 or 2 years