Hi guys, weekends approaching again. Hope you've earned a few bob. Has anyone taken part in a collective energy switch? I've just been made an offer from the East Riding of Yorkshire (despite living in Barnsley) and it's about £150 a year saving on my current tariff with EDF. I usually do the comparisons through Money supermarket and the rest, but decided to try this for a change. It's come up with an award winning company with great feedback, yet not one of the so called 'Big 6'. I'm just wondering if many of you have done it this way before and been happy with the process? Be seeing you.
Don’t be guided by the headline “saving” it’s usually a saving against the standard rate which hardly anyone is on. Check the TCR tariff comparison rates - standing charge and pence per kilowatt for each energy and then make a decision Most of the price comparison n sites will give you this info but usually right at the bottom of pages or even on the second or third page
Some quality savings on that, just doing the "bank tarting" and made hundreds on it, its paid for half of our family holiday this year
What I've found in the past is the difference in cost is usually attributable to the service level offered. I have a mate who bought Gas, Electricity, Coal and Oil for a living and he gave me an outline of how the whole market works. The big 6 normally either generate ( electricity) or transport ( gas) down the networks. Every seller irrespective of size , buys gas and electricity in the Wholesale market and pays exactly the same price per kilowatt hour. As well as the " raw" product costs, there are charges to get the " product" from source to the meter. These fees are known as Network or Transmission, /Distribution costs. Add in the duty imposed by HM Government e.g Fossil Fuel levy, Feed in tariff, which all consumers pay to subsidise those who have fitted solar panels, wind turbines or other means of generation and VAT and you get to an all inclusive price. All these costs are embedded in the outturn price. For example out of the cost of a litre of petrol or diesel, HM Treasury creams off 57.95 pence per litre. The main cost involved in the sale of gas and electricity is in back office Customer services re- call centre personnel, energy saving advisors, billing and metering specialists, the provision of smart meters etc. There's nothing wrong in using a small provider of course, but ask yourself, why are East Riding of Yorkshire selling gas and electricity.? Answer. They are getting paid a commission. So the supplier has to cover that by probably being frugal on its service provision. They're only obliged to read the meter once every two years, so if they don't fit smart meters and you fail to register your own regular readings, they are at liberty to inflate your monthly estimated usage. There was also a supply shortage warning on gas recently. That can be averted usually by interrupting dual fuel customers who get a lower price when their supply is temporarily suspended, but if there ever was a shortage, the generators re- the Big 6 would see to it that their dedicated customers were supplied first and the smaller suppliers would probably be put on allocation.
So. Your saying that the big 6 actually have the ability to remotely switch off the supply to any given building or customer. How?
No nezbfc.They have what are called " interruptible" customers. The latter are usually large consumers like factories, supermarkets, food processing plants etc. They they have to have alternative sources to generate energy. A lot have combined Heat and power facilities and can also use wind turbines, ground source heat pumps, biomass, oil or coal boilers and generators. At times of high demand if the generators of gas or electricity don't have sufficient product to meet demand, some hours before they wish to " interrupt" they send their customer a warning and ask them to prepare to use their alternative energy source. To compensate for the ability to interrupt, they offer quite a sizeable discount from the Wholesale cost. The service is not available to us (Domestic customers. ) As already said, its limited to Industrial and Commercial customers only. National Grid are very good at predicting load e.g a power surge occurs at circa 7-45 pm weeknights, apart from Tuesday night ( anybody know why?). As well as their normal sources of generation, they have stand by independent generators that can " spill" power into the grid, so that outages and interruptions are kept to an absolute minimum.
The big six are: British Gas, EDF/GDF- Electricity de France/ Gas de France, E.ON ( formerly POWERGEN), Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern Energy and nPower ( formerly National Power, Midlands, Yorkshire Electricity). As their name implies EDF/GDF are French owned, E.ON and nPower are German owned, Scottish Power are owned by Spanish Company Iberdrola. Scottish and Southern were formed by the merger of Southern Electricity and SWALEC ( South Wales Electricity Company). They are due to be taken over by Innogy the parent group of nPower very shortly so six will become five. That leaves British Gas who are part of the UK owned company Centrica. The de-regulation of the Energy market was supposed to bring about competition, but since it was introduced its now monopolised by the Germans French and Spanish who together with BG have truly got us all, by the short and curlies. The sooner Jezza gets in and it's all brought back into Public ownership the better for me.
Coronation Street, end of part one, when millions of kettles are flicked on. I once gave that answer, thinking it was a joke, on a school trip to Ferrybridge, wasn't looking quite so smug in front of my mates when it turned out to be correct.
Spot on JBP. I've been on a tour of a Power station as well and they told us that bit of information.
These are cheap if anyone wants to give them a blast. Cheaper than the big six, they do like you to read the meters for them. Also give you £50 credit for switching and me the same for recommending. I signed up from a recommendation, miles cheaper than my last supplier. I used to work for E.on, in those days I wouldn’t have touched a smaller supplier for fears of service issues and the like but I can honestly say having been with these for months (and all through the winter) they’ve been great. All two times I rang them...! Chris has given you £50 of FREE renewable energy. To claim your free gift, sign up using this link: https://bulb.co.uk/refer/chris6155 I’ve shared it before and a couple on this forum have used it. It’s there if you want it.