Any COL help this year with electric bill?

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  • gbhxu's Avatar
    Level 12
    After my bill in September I will have had 14 months of free electric.

    (£150 via Council tax, £400 bill credit, £200 Alterative Fuel Payment and £150 Warm Home Discount)

    I know I should qualify for WHD. Is there going to be any COL help this year?
  • 9 Replies

  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    @gbhxu

    The criteria for this years WHD hasn't been announced yet.

    If you are in receipt of certain disability payments (DLA, PIP, etc.) then you get the next £300 in Autumn and another £299 in early spring 2024. If you live in Wales and are on heating oil and on certain benefits you will get the council £200 assistance.

    Unless they announce anything new, that's about it. The Government are adamant that there won't be any EBSS this year.
    Last edited by retrotecchie; 01-09-23 at 16:13.
    Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player. I DON'T work for or on behalf of EON.Next, but am willing to try and help if I can. Not on mains gas, mobile network or mains drainage. House heated almost entirely by baby dragons.
  • gbhxu's Avatar
    Level 12
    @retrotecchie

    I'm not counting the £900 COL payments.

    That £601 this year will go towards buying coal and logs
  • DebF_EONNext's Avatar
    Community Team
    That's a fantastic result @gbhxu 14 months free 🤯 Have you been doing anything in particular to keep your usage lower or has it just been through the extra support we had last year? I'm always on the lookout for more energy saving tips so if you have any please share them over on the Sustainable Future boards!

    As far as I know there isn't going to be any energy bill support scheme this year however we do have lots of support for customers who find themselves struggling and needing a bit of extra support, our helping hand thread outlines all the ways you can get help with your energy 😊
    "Green is the prime colour of the world and that from which it's loveliness arises"-Pedro Calderon De La Barca 🌳

    OUT OF OFFICE UNTIL 04/05/24 🏖

  • gbhxu's Avatar
    Level 12
    I live on my own and do the following:-

    Cooking in an air fryer and microwave

    Boil full kettle and either make a flask of coffee or keep unused water in flask until wanted

    All in One computer only uses 65 watts.

    Charge phone with lead plugged into USB port

    Charge watch with lead plugged into USB port

    When computer is switched on at night, lighting is table lamp plugged into USB port

    Turn off router when not required.

    Only a small chest freezer and am under the counter fridge are on all the time

    When you're living, no, existing on benefits, you've got to be careful with your money. To put things in perspective, my benefits are less than I was earning in 2005 when I had to stop working due to illness.
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92

    Boil full kettle and either make a flask of coffee or keep unused water in flask until wanted



    Turn off router when not required.

    It actually works out marginally more energy efficient and slightly cheaper to boil the exact amount of water when you need it rather than boil a full kettle and store the hot water.

    Turning off the router will save a little energy but the trade off is the time the router takes to establish a connection and then fine tune the connection speed to 'relearn' the signal to noise ratio on the incoming WAN. My router has a schedule for low power mode so only consumes half a watt at night. I save more than half the power by switching off the wi-fi completely and using Ethernet connections to my computers.

    My phones, power tool batteries, internet router, table lamps and heating controls are all powered by off-grid solar. In the event of a power cut, which happens quite regularly round here, I'm good to go.

  • geoffers's Avatar
    Level 28

    Turning off the router will save a little energy but the trade off is the time the router takes to establish a connection and then fine tune the connection speed to 'relearn' the signal to noise ratio

    Also, not sure if it's still the case, but certainly was in the early days of ADSL... That the system learnt the quality of your connection and set the max speed dependent on this.

    So continual breaks in the connection(ie turning off the router) was deemed as poor line quality so resulted in the line speed being set to a lower rate.

    Probably all different now we're mainly on fibre rather than copper, but may still be a factor to consider
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    @geoffers

    90% of premises in the UK are still copper over the last mile. We only got fibre in our village because it has a school. No shop, no pub, no bus service...but it has a school which is closing next spring!

    The Senedd made it compulsory for all schools in Wales to have decent broadband, so our village benefitted from that scheme. Still only FTTC but copper for the last 400 yards! But shiny new copper, to be fair.

    My router still needs to 'retrain' if I lose connection or turn the router off.
    Last edited by retrotecchie; 06-09-23 at 15:59.
  • geoffers's Avatar
    Level 28
    @geoffers

    My router still needs to 'retrain' if I lose connection or turn the router off.

    This seems to confirm my recollection with ADSL, but looks like it's not an issue with full fibre (not FTTC)

    With a full-fibre connection, there's no need to worry about it, but switching off the router often on a copper broadband line (i.e. ADSL, FTTC / VDSL2 or G. fast) will cause Dynamic Line Management (DLM) to assume your connection is unstable and slow you down.
    https://www.unifiedworld.co.uk › c...Can I save money by turning off my Wi-Fi router at night? - Unified World
    Last edited by geoffers; 06-09-23 at 16:45.
  • retrotecchie's Avatar
    Level 92
    This seems to confirm my recollection with ADSL, but looks like it's not an issue with full fibre (not FTTC)

    With a full-fibre connection, there's no need to worry about it, but switching off the router often on a copper broadband line (i.e. ADSL, FTTC / VDSL2 or G. fast) will cause Dynamic Line Management (DLM) to assume your connection is unstable and slow you down.
    https://www.unifiedworld.co.uk › c...Can I save money by turning off my Wi-Fi router at night? - Unified World

    But you can always turn DLM off. My old ADSL only gave me 1.1 meg and that was on a good day as I was 3.7 miles from the exchange on very old wires. When the engineer turned off DLM as a last resort, my speed went up to a roaring 2 meg and stayed there rock solid.

    I was told by an Openreach engineer that DLM is not compatible with the majority of older UK exchanges, especially rural ones. The speed will always ramp down under noisy conditions, but will rarely ramp back up again!