Gas prices wont come down for a decade?

[oreste]

According to the papers today. Others are commenting that the Ukraine effect has already been reversed on the wholesale market but is not going to translate into reductions for us as we no longer have EU price controls. Is this realistic?

Christ l hope not😭

At what point is it cheaper to look at using other ways of heating? Where can I get info about the price of gas vs price of coal and wood?

I don’t think the Ukraine effect has been reversed ! Wholesale prices have dropped significantly over the last two weeks but that’s because it’s so warm - it has nothing to do with Ukraine.

it doesn’t really matter what daily prices do, energy suppliers buy gas/power months in advance, and those forward prices are still high, because they still expect supplies to be affected because of the Ukraine crisis.

The daily ‘spot’ price doesn’t filter through to consumers, although hopefully the warm weather will mean gas in store won’t be used up and won’t need to be topped up as much next winter - which hopefully might help lower prices, but there are many variables.

The cynic in me says that gas prices will be kept artificially high to try and force people into getting heat pumps.
As it stands, gas is the cheapest form of heating for most people, especially when you factor in the cost of having a heat pump/ solar panels / underfloor heating/ power wall combo, which is easily £20k+. That’s if your CH system will even be remotely acceptable in terms of temperatures, a basic experiment is to turn your boiler flow temp down to 50° and see if your house is warm enough in minus temps, if not then you would also need huge new rads ( if you have microbore pipes then you can forget it).
DH is a heating engineer and he’s got a couple of courses booked in the new year with boiler manufacturers which include hydrogen, which seems more likely for most people rather than heat pumps, which aren’t suitable for many. He knows of lots of people who are already having heat pumps ripped out due to the expense of running them, even with their increased efficiency.

I have heard about the futures contracts being bought at higher prices than the current rate (even though it was the right thing to do at the time).

I hope not.

I've done everything I possibly can to keep the heating bills down this autumn. I've just put in the reading and my combined bill for December was £254 for a 4 bed house.

That's including the CoL rebate and me doing my absolute best, using the log burner most nights rather than turning the heating on.

The bill for the whole year was £1100, and will be at least double next year 🙁

My gas and electricity bill for this month was over £350. That's just crazy! I know it'll only be that high for the next couple of months and then go back down again as the weather improves but that's a lot of money.

BIL/SIL upgraded last summer to a beautiful sandstone character property. They replaced most of the windows with double glazing not long after buying. They have found this first winter in if they put the central heating on the smart meter says it costs them £35 a DAY 😱 and the place still isnt warm! They are resorting to using room heaters for just the rooms they are using instead and struggling with the extend of the increase cost.

I was relaying this to my Dbro who lives in a gorgeous very large renovated 3 story town house for the last 20 years and asking if his was similar or if they could reduce with some work in the house. He showed me his smart meter on the wall was reading £1200 for the month 😱and there was still nearly a week of December left to go. But he said it will only be that high for 2-3 months and although higher than before he expected it.

Right now I am thankful for my modest but warmish modernish characterless 2.5 bed house, even if it does sometimes feel as though we are all living on top of each other!

That is insane! I think I will be in that position when my deal runs out. Do you think there is something going on with the smart meters? I have resisted having one installed despite being put under pressure by the utility company.

We are being ripped off. Pure and simple.

Other countries have managed to keep prices lower than the UK. Ukraine is being blamed for everything by some part of the media. The reality is that we have greedy utility companies who are making record profits while people struggle and a government who is unwilling to act.

Easy solution: vote in a Labour government & re-nationalised water, gas, electricity and the transport system.

@Survey99 That's crazy.

Mine is a 1890s cottage on water meadows in a valley. I've replaced all the old single glazed windows with double, insulated the loft and sorted the damp patch in the sitting room. It now stays quite happily at 18 degrees and I paid £250 gas last month.

I've used the log burner most evenings but the rest of the house hasn't been freezing.

Is your brother's house still drying out after being damp from being empty? Or is their roof uninsulated? There must be something wrong somewhere.

I don't think there is anything going on with smart meters, if there was it would be easily noticed by comparing usage. My dbro usage has been consistent for the 20 years he has been in there, if anything it had reduced as the kids moved out, the prices have increased. His hallway is the size of my living room, and the middle of the stairwell nearly the size of my box room going up three storys all with high ceilings. No idea how he heats just that huge open space which is bigger m3 than my whole house!

Same with BIL/SIL new house. Large rooms and high ceilings, large tall hallways, huge tall windows/bay windows and a lot of space to heat and huge windows to lose heat through.

My dbro is ok as both he and his dw are loaded earn well and careers have continued to progress through their lives and while heating is expensive they can absorb the increases.

BIL/SIL have just bought this year and I think they have pushed themselves a bit tight not realising how much energy is needed to heat houses that size and the energy costs have really caught them out. I guess many with larger houses and not much financial breathing space will be in the same boat.

Agree.

Yes a right swizz

Petrol has dropped in price

This thread is full of misinformation - it’s not helpful to other readers when people just make things up.

Global wholesale prices have been at record highs, go and look for external wholesale gas and power prices and check for yourselves.

Even where countries are putting caps and limits in place, they still have to pay the global price and will have to clawback those costs somehow through general taxation or similar. Other countries in the world aren’t paying lower prices where they are reliant on imports.

Anybody who doesn’t have a smart meter through choice is missing out on the ability to better monitor their usage. Smart meters simply communicate usage data through to a central infrastructure - they are useful to track your spend, that’s all.

Energy suppliers currently make less than 2% profit on energy supply - its heavily regulated. So for every £100 of wholesale energy you use, the supplier makes £102. That £2 is their profit for forecasting volumes, hedging, communicating with customers, regulatory compliance, network balancing etc etc. That’s why so many suppliers went bust. Some suppliers make money on energy trading, or generation - that’s business, shareholders deserve profits from a well run company - see also, supermarkets, telecoms companies, banks, and so on…….

Obviously almost all energy companies buy the volumes they need well in advance of supply and ‘hedge’ those costs. They estimate demand and buy accordingly. Only a fool would buy energy a day ahead of when they need it. Although that’s what the government did when they took over Bulb - costing British taxpayers billions more than it should have done. Hence nationalising suppliers would be a terrible idea, although they might be glad to get rid of their supply businesses - it wouldn’t make global energy cheaper though !

And how much do you think this would cost ?

Due to the decline of the North Sea fields, we have to buy most of our gas and oil from companies based abroad. How do you plan to nationalise a foreign company?

We should have kept our gas storage

I’m already planning on where to add more curtains etc and new thermals for next year so buy as soon as this winter ends. Prepare early while it’s cheaper. Smart meters make no difference to people’s actual usage so nobody is missing out by not having one. We had one in the house house and the bulls just went up and up and up no matter what we did. Got rid of the hot tub, still higher, no dish washer all smart bulbs etc still higher and higher.

New house old meters now a semi not terraced bigger house blah blah blah and it’s not costing more than our old house despite prices going up. Same city.

I don't really understand the whys and wherefors about the cost of living crises, including gas prices, but I kind of assumed that they were this price or more forever now.

If they hover around this level then at least it can be taken into account when planning finances. How can they be allowed to rocket more and more? The way that the subsidy structure is designed is really demeaning. I notice it on my bank statement and have a split second of wondering whether there has been a mistake, then I remember.

Apparently due to warm winter gas prices are falling. The only people we can blame are greedy chairmen.

It’s not just us. I was reading yesterday that in the usa a lettuce costs $7, might have been $11. Seeing as we’re on pretty much £1 to $1 that’s scary. And the USA hasn’t been affected by Brexit and I can’t imagine Ukraine will have affected them as much as us.

I think the era of cheaper living is over.

My December bill was £465. I mean I don’t know what to do with that….

I'm glad I don't have a smart meter because it would send my anxiety through the roof. I am lowering usage drastically but I do not wish to become a slave to numbers on an electronic display. Sometimes, people can get overzealous with all of it. As long as you do your best in reducing consumption, that should be good enough. If it is not, then you will not be alone and the problem is the system, not your consumption.