How the f*** are you all managing your electric bills?

[cofingalthetime]

I don't have gas...
Electric has gone up from 139 per month, to 225, and now the latest is 450...

I don't know how I'm supposed to manage.

Do you all pay by DD. I don't want a meter, I had one before, and it was a nightmare, so expensive.

If 450 goes out of my account next month I won't be able to buy food or petrol or clothes

I got the 150 from the council, and paid it immediately into my electric ,b ut that's a drop in the ocean. How are you all managing.

I'm really really scared.

no. it's not the billing amount that's capped but the price per unit plus daily standing charge.
if you use a lot of gas or electricity your bill can be a lot higher than the 'average' the calculations are based on.
you need meter readings & your usage & a calculator to see where your usage would sit.

It's significantly down from the peak but still much higher that a year ago.

You can see the rise and fall of the wholesale gas prices over different time periods here www.theice.com/products/910/UK-Natural-Gas-Futures/data

As a carer you will have saved the government a fortune. Whether working or otherwise. 💐

After today's news I've fixed today til July 2023 with British Gas. It was for £30 more than I was currently paying and have crunched the numbers based on my last 12 months usage and it works out that same as their estimate.

I've also got an alarm set in my phone to remind me to look for electric blankets/throws in August, hoping they'll be on offe/sale !

It doesn't work like that. The energy cap is based on the 'average' user as specifically defined by Ofgem for both electric and gas. Energy companies then set both the price per unit of energy and the standing charge per day for everyone, so that the 'average' user will not be charged more energy in the year than whatever the price cap is ( currently £1971 per annum)

If you use more energy than the 'average' user you will pay more than the cap, if you use less energy than the 'average' user your bill will be less

Ofgem change the 'average' usage every 2 years based on the median usage over the previous 2 years. Currently these are 2,900kWh of electricity, 12,000kWh of gas, and 4,200kWh of electricity for Economy 7.

right now I simply can’t afford it. Im just not paying. I set a DD for what I can afford & they accepted it & confirmed nothing is being added to credit files right now. So I will pay it when I’m in a better position. I’m not starving myself or my family for the energy crisis. I’ll deal with it at some point but right now I simply can’t afford it

Cancel your direct debit. Start taking monthly readings yourself and inputting them. Then just pay quarterly. Your direct debit has gone up to that - doesn't mean that's actually what you're spending.

Was it £225 before 1st April and has it gone up to £450 after the price cap was raised? Whatever you were paying for your fuel before the price cap ( and assuming you were on a standard variable tariff when you were paying £225 immediately prior to the rise) and also assuming you were not in debit to them, then the increase has jumped for you by 100% - when the price cap has only gone up by 54% and they should not be charging you this amount. You should discuss it with them. Many energy companies are doing this because of the anticipated further rise in October as we enter the winter months when bills will obviously be higher. . The cheapest way to pay for the amount of Electricity you use is by Monthly DD

EDF tried to put my 93 year old Mother's Bill up by 124% even although she was in credit and I took issue with them. Her payments have now been cut back to what she was paying before 1st April Plus 54% which is all that she should be paying. In spite of the fact that I resolved the issue with EDF I also reported the situation to Ofgem, since their CEO said he was looking at reports that Energy companies were trying to put DD's up by a lot more than the 54%.

Last but not least - is the £450 a fixed rate they are offering you rather than the standard variable rate? It is probably WAY over what you need to pay but you need to work that one out. You need to actually know exactly how many units in KWh you actually use annually and work out what your bill should be costing you and it will give you a much better idea of what your actual costs are and what might be reasonable to be paying every month ( remembering that you will use more in the winter). So annual cost at the current rate divided by 12 will give you a reasonable starting point.

Mines gone up from £61 a month (fixed rate gas and electricity) to £72. I was expecting significantly more. I am a frugal user and have been for a long time but this almost makes me feel more nervous because I feel like it’s going to come and bite me in the ass over the next few months…it was a nice shock but also a “oh god when’s it gonna hit me then??” shock…..

Everything else has flown up of course and I’ve just fixed the mortgage rate as my fixed rate expired to months ago and it literally went whoosh within a few weeks….

I’m disabled and on benefits, I get around 1100 a month, after the October rise my bill will be around 500 per month. I’m scared.
oh and the government are changing disabled people over to UC meaning we lose a significant amount of money. (Over 100 per month)
Vote Tory and you have the poor and disabled being systematically wiped out.

Please phone your supplier.

5 bed house, 2 kids, both wfh full time. Numerous sports, washing machine on constantly, computers, lots of showers etc.

We went from £92 in sept 2021, to £148 (both gas & electricity). In April they started charging £409.
I told them it was unaffordable and we’ve changed it to £200. I could have told them any number they were very helpful and nice. Whole thing including the wait time took 20 mins. It’s now on our heads to reduce our usage. Which is fine, we can review again in the winter.

good luck

Then god help us we’ll be finished but then with covid now this I think they were banking on this get rid of us pick us off one by one.

I don't understand the comments about giving up work making someone better off. From the sound of it, they are confused, and it's switching from tax credits to UC that's made them better off, not giving up work. There's no need to give up work to claim UC. The whole point of UC, the reason it was introduced, is that you always have more money working than you would not working.

I mean working and claiming UC should always result in more money than not working and claiming UC.

Electric. 13.19p/kWh 23.360p/day

gas - 2.420p/kWh 22.870p/day

this is fixed rate with sainsburys

Switch all your utilities to Utility Warehouse. They are lower than the government price cap and guarantee that they will be for the next 10 years. xx

Just looked at UW and it seems that you can only make a saving, that's not a huge amount anyway, by taking some or all of broadband, mobile and some 'home protection' service, which I suspect is appliance cover by another name.

Plus of course earning commission by recommending the service to friends and family. I'm not interested in making getting a good price for my utilities dependent on me taking advantage of my nearest and dearest.

Both the mobile service and broadband was more expensive than what's available separately so negates any saving on utilities and I've never felt the need to protect my appliances, so that's not a service I'd pay for.

Plus I don't like how they quote a price that is not based on individual usage because that leads people to think that's the price, whatever they use, when we all know that it's very likely to be more than that.

You need to turn as much off as possible, dont leave unnecessary items on standby. Wash clothes only when dirty and no dryer. Time your shower. October will see yet another increase. I dread to think about next year as apparently it will increase again in April and then again in October.

Octopus tried to effectively quadruple my DD! I suspect it is because we had a period of high energy use during a build that finished 15 months ago(which is paid off). And our energy usage doesn’t follow the normal high in winter pattern. I have just worked out the correct level myself and changed the DD online.

What people don’t seem to understand about UC is it is different for everyone and their circumstances. If you have children/are a career you will get more. For a single person you will qualify for alot less and yes probably will need to use a food bank.

That's an amazing rate but it doesn't help the OP, because its obviously a fix taken out some time ago and she doesn't have a time machine.

When that runs out your electricity will more than double and your gas go up more than 3 times. I'd start saving now to prepare unless you can afford for your monthly payment to treble.

We're on a hideous fixed rate as hedged our bets on how much things would go up in October. I don't think now it will seem such a bad deal.

Our costs haven't risen as dramatically as I'd feared but we've not had the heating on, put the hot water on once a day and have been much more frugal with the electric:

• Using the tumble for 20 mins a week rather than several hours
• Rarely using the oven - and then for quick things rather than a long roast
• Switching as many lightbulbs for LED and removing some others
• working out the cheapest setting on the washing machine - and washing things less.

Winter is going to be miserable.

I'm with Octopus and have always found them incredibly helpful and resonable.

Last summer, when the press first warned that the new price cap would be a lot higher and there would be significant increases, they let me fix for 2 years at the June 2021 price, but not start paying that price until November. I'm so relieved I did that, as I'll be paying the same £80 a month until Nov 2023. And then I'll panic, if charges haven't gone down by then (and when do they ever go down?).

It seems to be the people who are all-electric, or reliant on oil for heating, who have been hit hardest. My MIL and I are in very similar circumstances: both live alone, in near identical 2-bed semis that are well insulated and are mostly home all day (I'm WFH).

But she has no gas, and heats the downstairs and her bedroom with oil-filled radiators, has an immersion heater and an electric cooker, while I have gas for heating, hot water and cooking.

If I hadn't been on a fixed deal, my energy costs would have gone up to £120 a month. Hers have gone up to £230 - almost double. She's very savvy, and negotiated that down from the £260 her supplier was asking for. The amount will be correct if her consumption remains the same and she checked comparison sites to see if she could do any better, but couldn't.

Her energy costs now take nearly a third of her pension, which is her only income, although she gets her rent and council tax wholly covered by benefits.

I do wonder how many people realise that the 'price cap' is not a maximum bill you will pay but a price per KWH and standing charge that a company can't go over?

So if you know your usage, you should be able to predict your bill for the year once you know the price per KWH and standing charge.

Another thing - we have had the April price cap that will cover people till October - so the next few months, heating costs are relatively low, and then come October, heating costs will increase and will be at the October price cap levels.

I think October will be a real shock for many people when new DDs are set up.

Eon have just done the same to us. We were upped to £75 earlier this year and on our latest statement generated last week we were £29 in credit. Email last night saying they are upping us to £174 a month and if we cancel our DDR they will charge more?? Their phone lines are not open until 9am so I can't call to discuss with them but there's no way £174 is going to be manageable.