What has your energy bill increased to? ☹️🤬

[OhPeeQueue]

Received an email last night that my energy bill was increasing. Gas-£109 a month. Electric-£79 a month. To think we were only paying around £120 a month a year or two ago, they’ve steadily increased the price.

I was working 2 jobs up until a few months ago and stopped due to stress. Wish I hadn’t now. ☹️.

Our tariff ended in Sept: £100pm dual fuel, and we had a bit of credit
New one: £142pm

This is for a 2 bed very old end terrace, very poor insulation and crappy windows/doors. I’m trying to only put the heating on when DS is due back from school.

This is my unit. Have only just found out how to do it

What’s your bill like @mogsrus? Sorry if you’ve told us before, loads of posts.

@OhPeeQueue

What’s your bill like *@mogsrus*? Sorry if you’ve told us before, loads of posts.

We get billed every 4 months. Heating & hob in winter around 10/15 will see it off as we are not on mains gas but the crucial thing is our boiler stat is 63deg it used to run over 70. Big difference

We’re an all electric 3 bed, 3 people mud terrace. DD is £155 pm. At the beginning of Nov we were £350 in credit. Ovo emailed about three weeks ago to reduce our DD to £125. Then the following week they wanted to increase it to £175 - estimating that we’d be £600 in credit by Nov 22. We’ve used £30 more electricity compared to last November - 18kwh difference.

@CPDubs

We’re in a large Edwardian end of terrace with double glazed wooden sash windows. Our dd was about £120 a month averaged out over the year. Now prices have gone up our smart meter is hitting £10-11 a day 😵😵😵😵

Single glazed sash windows here . You can hear them rattling in the wind!

@mogsrus, so you cant directly compare like for like then? Won't be buying the boiler thing

That’s fine by me we don’t get bills from a energy company but it’s real nice to decrease that boiler stat down

Two posters have said they're all electric,then they have oil fired heating,that's not all electric

I'm with Octopus and £384 in credit - that's giving meter readings but a fixed price until June 2022 - for those who understand these things does that mean I could be landed with a huge bill at the end of fixed price rate?

@Littlelottielulu

I'm with Octopus and £384 in credit - that's giving meter readings but a fixed price until June 2022 - for those who understand these things does that mean I could be landed with a huge bill at the end of fixed price rate?

It just means that when your fixed rate ends your unit price will increase so fuel will cost more at that point.

It just means that when your fixed rate ends your unit price will increase so fuel will cost more at that point.
I understand that, I'm worrying that because my price was 'fixed rate' that they may think I've underpaid with the fixed rate and get a huge bill? I do know that energy prices are rocketing - I will be really unhappy if it wipes my credit out as they backdate it before the energy rises x

How much is your monthly payment @Littlelottielulu? £384 credit is a lot if you're paying £50 pm but not so much if it's £300.

I'm new to Octopus, but they seem to be asking for monthly meter readings so you should see your credit dwindle over winter with each monthly statement as you use more than your monthly payment, but then this should balance out as we go into the spring and you should need to use less heating and you might even start getting ahead again.

Unless you use a lot of energy, eg more than £200 pm at your current prices, when averaged over the year, I can't see you building up a big debt by June.

You're quite lucky, it is likely that the unit rate and standing charges for your fix are below the price cap and anything available currently, so you should stay where you are and just keep an eye on your balance when you get each statement to see how it's going.

But yes, unless there's a big drop in wholesale prices, you need to prepare yourself for a big rise when your fix ends. It could be that you'll be best letting your account go onto the 'variable' rate, which at the moment should be regarded as a 6 monthly fix at the price cap, which is currently below the cost of supplying energy and cheaper than any fix available, but who knows what's going to happen over the next few months with both wholesale prices and also the price cap rules/system.

To clarify, you won't pay a higher rate per unit for any energy used before your fix ends, the only 'backdating' that could happen is that if you build up a debt due to whatever you're paying now being insufficient for your current usage.

I think that most energy companies like customers to be at zero credit in the summer. They then build up credit over autumn, which is used over winter, maybe getting into a little debt then, but then this is repaid in spring as usage drops.

I must have been lucky, because it's been years, if ever that I've had problems that a lot of people report, ie building up a big debt on the account, or an energy company trying to set the DD unrealistically high so that a big credit builds up, but that could be that I'm a serial switcher and have rarely stayed with the same energy company for more than a year because, up to the last few months, it's always been cheaper to hop from deal to deal, except last time, where I renewed with Avro, but now it turns out that they were cheaper because they were setting prices too low, not hedging and topping up their cashflow by asking customers to pay a month in advance, rather than a few days behind, like the bigger companies do.

@Littlelottielulu

It just means that when your fixed rate ends your unit price will increase so fuel will cost more at that point. I understand that, I'm worrying that because my price was 'fixed rate' that they may think I've underpaid with the fixed rate and get a huge bill? I do know that energy prices are rocketing - I will be really unhappy if it wipes my credit out as they backdate it before the energy rises x

You will only have underpaid if the amount you are paying currently doesn't cover what you are using. If you are submitting your monthly readings then you will know your usage and won't get hit with a surprise bill.

Sorry @mogsrus but that really isn’t the same is it? And you don’t have a mains gas supply? I read about the nu energy boiler thing you have, it’s recommended by Scottish power, so I don’t doubt you, but I wonder why more people don’t have this.

Maybe because people don’t look for ways of getting more for slightly less. Put it simply.. when you fill a bowl of hot water,can you put your hand in it straight away? If the answer is no & you have to put cold in it why are you heating it up to well over the temperature & then reducing it; it’s costing you to do that which to me is crazy I’m sure you would agree so why don’t people turn the water thermostat down a few degrees? It does make a difference. Don’t know if you have seen my picture of my unit? The left hand number is the heated water leaving my boiler. See how low it is. Our boiler stat used to be turned up to well over 70 as I expect many stats are. People have got to start asking questions to experts about doing more. It’s like changing old lightbulbs to l e ds. They do the same job but more efficient. The unit just makes a boiler stop the ridiculous dry cycling,which costs. Stop that and you will see a difference

Anyone with together energy, print out your bills and go through with a fine toothed comb. They sent us a bill saying we owed 1000. Going over the bills for the mast 6 months, actually we are 125 in credit after fixing their numerous errors such as repeatedly listing credits as debits.

@mogsrus have you heard of legionnaires disease? Water has to get hot to kill it off. Telling people to set their water temp low enough to put their hand in is very bad advice.

I've been sent my options when my fixed rate ends with Octopus
Hmm which do I choose out of these 3 options I wonder?

We pay 296 and don’t come out of our fix until feb. Guess it will be over 500 after that! Hey ho. We do have a large fish pond and don’t exactly turn things off

[quote poshme]@mogsrus have you heard of legionnaires disease? Water has to get hot to kill it off. Telling people to set their water temp low enough to put their hand in is very bad advice. [/quote]
Anything over 60d kills legions & mostly lives in aircon units & hot water tanks not combo boiler. I am not advocating stupidly lowering the water output stat,just slightly,& it will start saving you money,I don't know what else to say,it's just concrete sound advice,but I get vilified for offering advise actually works.drive smoothly & your petrol will last slightly longe r so you get more out of your gallon,simple economic sense,but because no one on here has heard of this unit,& I can only assume it's because it's not branded all over the usual magazine's that available it's considered as hokum,as I said before our house has a heat recovery system as well that is something else that's not all over magazine's either I will do anything to get more for less & I would hope other people would want that too

We are with Bulb and since they upgraded the smart meter a few months ago our usage has jumped from £140 to £245 pm!

Oiur DD is still at £145 but waiting for it to jump

Thought it was all down to DS's gaming but reading these other posts maybe it's not all his fault

Hello. Popping my head in to say that we're doing a Q&A with fuel poverty charity National Energy Action about these energy price hikes on Wednesday 23rd Feb at 12 noon. The thread is now open for questions here.