[Hindleburger]

Originally Posted by mdk1980

Received an email Tuesday with the wonderful news that my tariff for electricity was going from 29.48p to 35.31p, and for gas from 7.31p to 10.29p as of 1 October. Standing charge (still a massive p-take) from 41.66p to 42.67p and 27.21 to 28.28p respectively. Not great, not terrible, we all knew it was coming. Still paying too much for power compared to anywhere else in the world, but what can you do, right?

I logged onto the website today, 1 October, to check my outstanding balance (I cancelled my debit ages ago so that they couldn't steal money from me anymore), scrolled down and saw my actual rates from 1 October were 53.16p for electricity and 14.72p for gas, almost DOUBLE the previous rate! Glad I'm not the only one being scammed, so they can't hide it for long.

Something random ran through my head while I was typing this: the government for some stupid reason is paying the energy discount directly to the suppliers instead of us. So, what if they've pushed their prices up intentionally so that they don't have to pass the discounts onto us? Eg: if your usage worked out to £10, and the government gave a £5 discount, e.On then pushes the price up so your usage now costs $15, so when they apply the discount, they still get all their money. Really wouldn't put it past them...

The maximum prices are still fixed by the Energy Price Cap. This gets reviewed by OfGem every three months) The Energy Price Cap is the max an energy company can charge, and is currently around 50p/kwh for electricity. The energy companies cannot charge more (until the next Price Cap review in three months at least, lets assume no change for simplicity). Liz Truss then gave us the Energy Price Guarantee, where she committed to keep the tariff to around 34p. The Truss discount will last until April '23, so she is paying anything over 34p (up to the full 50p) to the energy companies. In April 23, the Truss subsidy will end (Sunak/Hunt may replace it with something else) at which point, the tariff will still be 50p, but without the 16p subsidy from Truss anymore.
Your bills, for now at least, will show the charge is 50p, but it will also show a subsidy under the Energy Price Guarantee, of around 16p.

[meldrewreborn]

@Hindleburger

The truss EPG fixes maximum unit prices up till end march but it’s possible that standing charges could change in January and every quarter thereafter. The new Sunak EPG aims for maximum average cost of £3000 per annum from April, so £500 more than the current £2,500.
The nature of the EPG implies the government contribution will have to rise in January if, as expected, the OFGEM price cap figures permit another big increase, so that the £2,500 promise is maintained. Watch this space - more controversy must be expected.