To think that very few people can manage £4200 energy bills

[Butterflyfluff]

news.sky.com/story/energy-bills-forecast-to-rise-even-higher-than-previously-thought-12668906

This simply isn’t manageable for the majority of people.

Where’s this going to end?

@Liebig the energy prices are going up, while there is a real world cause for this it’s seems there’s also scope for negotiation with energy companies around their profitability. They have obligations to, and interest in, a country which has facilitated and subsidised them for a very long time.

What I’m getting at is it doesn’t all have to be tax payers money, tax payers and bill payers have contributed enough to the vast wealth of energy companies. Maybe they hold most of the cards, but they don’t hold all of the cards, and any government who lets them hold the country hostage like this is not fit for purpose, surely?

When they go bust nationalise on the cheap and or take a majority stake for the Uk taxpayer a la France. The economy of scale of delivering utilities for the many, not the few ...

www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/08/take-back-control-energy-industry

Doing this by diktat and control, rather than through swingeing one-off windfall taxes, simply cuts out the room for tax avoidance and negotiation. So no, I don’t find the Lib Dems’ £36bn one-year bung to the oil giants a radical solution. The radical solution is to take state control and partial ownership of this most strategic industry. Make it temporary if you want but it has to happen.
If that sounds extreme, it’s because the whole of politics is trapped by cognitive dissonance. Russia is not just at war with Ukraine, it is at war with the West. The Vladimir Putin regime aims to destroy our democratic societies by using the last few decades of the fossil fuel era to make our lives unlivable. All the propaganda pumped out by RT and Sputnik, all the practice runs towards Scotland by Russian nuclear bombers pale into insignificance compared with the actual economic power Russia is wielding by choking off gas supplies to Europe.

To keep the lights on and to stop our poorest and most infirm citizens shivering their way through the British winter, it is time to take wartime measures. Freeze the price of household energy. Take control of the supply and wholesale pricing of domestically produced oil and gas. Ban oil and gas exports. Make affordable energy a public good and a human right. And unlock investment in solar, wave and onshore wind power, and start building nuclear power stations: every one of those things will need command planning, not just planning permission.
We’re not fighting “the market” here: we’re fighting a dictator who’s determined to manipulate the market to destroy our way of life and prevent the vital decarbonisation needed to save our planet. Politicians unprepared to face this fact have no role to play.

My supplier has emailed today asking for SEVEN THOUSAND pounds a year. It's not possible to pay that. We already turn off as much as possible.

I'm with Shell on a variable rate and they said they won't know anything until early September : was sent an email today.
I am a bit in credit and do monthly readings etc but it sounded as if it'll go up again soon.

£7000, £584 per month, they will be estimating the bill on the previous 2 years bills or longer. If you're coming off a fixed rate then just go onto the SVR and reduce costs by turning off everything that's left in stand by mode except the fridge, freezer and router, tell children that they must fully turn off items at the wall socket if not in use and remove charging leads from sockets.
If heating is gas lower the boiler temperatures to 50 degrees for water and 55 degrees for heating and lower the thermostat to 18 degrees, lower if you can tolerate a lower temperature.

Turning off most appliances in standby won’t make any real difference. You’re not losing kilowatt hours of power to a console or TV in standby.

Be careful about reducing boiler temperatures. Reduction below 60°C will lead to the possible formation of legionella colonies, which you absolutely do not want in your shower.

I would argue that all companies are only viable because of the state, and so, can only ever be in debt to society.

Unless you read Rand, then you lose cognitive functions and become a… libertarian.

You lose your cognitive functions for wanting to be left the fuck alone?

Would it really be trying it on? Could it not be trying to cushion the blow by spreading the increase over a longer period?

Consider the mythical, non-existent “typical household” on standard variable tariffs for both gas and electricity. Their annual cost at the moment is around £1,950 per year, which is £165/month

Let’s assume that some of the more pessimistic predictions turn out to be right. Annual costs will be

From October 2022: £3,900 pa. or £325/month
From January 2023: £4,200 pa or £350/month
From April 2023: £4,750 pa or £396/month
From July 2023: Not seen a forecast, assume same as April @ £396 month

So for the year from Oct 22 - Sep 23, the actual total cost will be £4,400, or £367/month. And since April you have been paying £165/month. That’s what you will pay in September, unless your DD changes early.

Now, in October you will get £66 back thanks to the £400 grant, and £67 back from December - March. So if your provider changes your DD every 3 months when the price cap changes, you would be paying (after the grant) as follows:

Sep: £165
Oct-Nov: £259
Dec: £258
Jan-Mar: £283
Apr-Jun: £396

Is that what you want to do? Or would you rather pay it more evenly, e.g. £320/month for 13 months?

£320 in September
£387 October - March (but then get £66/67 back)
£320 April- June.

In these times, people really need to know how much gas and electricity they use in kWh - old bills are a good place to start, but keep an eye on it going forward, especially if you are actively trying to reduce usage. Then take those numbers and multiply them by the pence per kWh you are paying now - and the new rates when they are announced, and forecasts for next year. Then add on those horrible standing charges, add electricity and gas together and divide by 12.

Thats where your Direct debit needs to be - assuming there’s no debt to deal with. If your DD is less than that, you need to set the extra aside somewhere.

Repeat this exercise monthly - forecasts are constantly changing, and your usage might be changing as well. Who knows, the government may actually get off their useless behinds and do something to improve things going forward. You might be able to reduce your monthly payment/savings.

But until then - we each need to keep on top of it. And if you can’t afford to pay the number it comes out at, contact your supplier and ask about the funds or schemes they have which might help.

Sure, you can see it that way.

Go find a remote place not part of any state. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and subsist by your own hand. Any assistance from the state or other people would make you a dirty hypocrite.

Have fun.

Or grow up, recall you’re part of society, and accept no man or woman is an island.

Be careful about reducing boiler temperatures. Reduction below 60°C will lead to the possible formation of legionella colonies, which you absolutely do not want in your shower

Only if you have a hot water cylinder. If your hot water is generated by a combi boiler, there is no warm water sitting round and no risk of legionella. And even with a hot water cylinder, you only need to keep it at 60 a couple of hours a week, you can have it lower the rest of the time.

While I’m on combi boilers - most have a keep-warm or comfort function which enables hot water to reach the taps more quickly. The boiler fires up every 1.5-2 hours to keep the water inside the boiler hot - and uses about 1.5-2kWh per day to do so. Switch it off, you save about 700 kWh of gas per year. At the moment that’s £50, but will soon be a lot more.

The downside is you have to wait longer for hot water. In our shower, it’s now 35 seconds rather than 20 - unless someone else has just finished. Worth it to save £50, £80, £100 per year, no?

Would it really be trying it on? Could it not be trying to cushion the blow by spreading the increase over a longer period?

Maybe, but that's only useful if that's what you want. I totally agree everyone should know what they have used and what the cost of that usage is - to track it themselves. If they then want to start paying towards next year's costs early, then putting the DD up now may be useful.

But do so with your eyes open so you know why it's happening and it's a deliberate choice on your part, iyswim.

Personally, I'll leave my DD where it is and set aside the extra I need, myself. Petty though it is, they're not getting my money until it's due

p.s. anyone working out their costs themselves also needs to add on the 5% VAT (unless Sunak/Truss suspends VAT on energy bills).

The 60°C heat cycle is also something used for heat pump systems, since they have very low energy heat, they have a resistive heating circuit in their tanks to kill off any bugs. But yes, combi systems without a tank don’t suffer this, though it’s good form to probably leave it at lethal temps to bacteria just to stop biofilms infection pipes.

My old boiler used to have that pre-heat function and I thought it was a system error when I heard the boiler firing up randomly without any call for heat. Turned it off on the one that replaced it for the very reason that I can wait 30 seconds for hot water.

Of course now we have water shortages looming, so…

Working as a group and getting assistance from others is not incompatible with being a libertarian.

I want to make my own decisions about what is best for me. You want me to rely on Liz Truss or Keir Starmer to make my decisions for me. I'm not sure I'm the one having trouble with my cognitive functions.

I think that you're right @Dissimilitude and the government will eventually find. They always do, when the pressure becomes unbearable and just that little bit too late. It'll be the same again.

*fold

I would just like to say to people PLEASE don’t sit in the dark this winter because you’re worried about turning the lights on. Even at 55p/kWh a modern lightbulb is very very cheap to run.

This 40w equivalent LED bulb uses 3.4w of electricity or 0.0034kwh - at the newer high rates that’s still less than 0.2p per hour. In other words, 10 of those cost 2p and hour. You could have 10 lightbulbs burning all night for 24p an night, or £7.20 a month. And most people wouldn’t have 10 bulbs on at once or all burning all night. Say 4 bulbs on for 6 hours in the winter months - that’s less than 5p. So please don’t remove bulbs, or go to great lengths to replace them with more expensive solutions like solar light, battery powered lights or candles. It is worth upgrading any old style lightbulbs you might still have around though.

I can see why people are angry about the quotes. 7k a year seems to be popping up everywhere. I mean, unless your box room is a weed farm, that's quite a stretch even with these prices...

Fun fact.
With 28p kwh small weed farm would cost about 3.5k a year😁

Amen. It is worrying what some people plan.

Similarly to some heating etc. Never using heating is not healthy, not a solution too. The cost if the heat is not ON TOP of the direct debits , it should be IN them. Yes, with rising price per unit, it will be more dear, but NEVER turning it on is asking for health and property issues.

As I said before, I think many people will be very angry about being thousands in credit in a year while they sat at home cold and in dark.

not all cost of the heat is on top...

Not none🙄

Ch4 had Ecotricity CEO on, Germany 23% rise, France 4% UK 250%

Sure these prices might rise but so will ours.

As Ecotricity said, Price NS gas... 50% of our needs, same with Green too, so that would be 65% of our need.

More important to see Truss in Vogue.

Aside, i ve just spent a while trying to calm down a friend who fears for her health this winter, 22k p.a as a Carer, 45hrs per week and has to run a car.

My advice was to get another job.

Which is also precisely not what libertarians are about. They’re the “I’ve got mine, Jack” group who also lament taxes going on poor people and infrastructure.

Crack open a book and learn what they stand for. They’re scum, kinda like the people you’re complaining about.

The Venn diagram for selfish naïve idiots, libertarians and Tories is a bloody circle.

Unfortunately it likely will come to that. People will leave otherwise useful and needed roles to go and pursue money just to survive.

The market is signalling people should basically stop caring, because it doesn’t pay.

Excellent economy, very healthy.

The Venn diagram for selfish naïve idiots, libertarians and Tories is a bloody circle

I feel we're digressing from the main thrust of the thread.