[Airlane1979]

I'm on NextFlex variable, 57p/day 27p/kWh, I use less than 900 kWh/year. Goes up in April to 71p/day, 23p/kWh, E.On estimates I'll pay £13 a year more.

E.On offers 12/24 month contract fix (Next Secure Fixed April 12m v5): 57p/day, 22p/kWh - so far as I can tell from the site.

Should I go for one of these?

[meldrewreborn]

@Airlane1979

As a low user (well done!) you're more likely to benefit from a tariff with a low standing charge. So your choice is sensible, but you should also consider fixing for longer if that assures you of a good standing charge for longer. But there are no guarantees in all this.

[wizzo227]

I've a similar situation of 900kWh/year low use, expecting <2kWh/day summer use. I've applied to "switch" to a different electricity bill supplier, not because they'll beat the EoN standing charge by a penny, but because EoN have not acknowledged that Ofgem specify the cap price at standard usage of about 3000kWh/year and not how that will be subdivided between unit p/kWh and standing charge p/day. A decrease to both would have been possible this time, but they chose to decrease p/kWh at the time of year when the sensible don't use many kWh, increase the p/day massively, and congratulate themselves for their efforts to keep prices down. So I'm leaving EoN in protest about the massively above-inflation increase to standing charge.

I think that by a "good" standing charge, someone means three times as much as a few years ago instead of slightly more than that.

[meldrewreborn]

@wizzo227 OFGEM do specify the maximum charges at 3,100 kWh per annum for electricity. OFGEM also mandate a maximum charge at 0 kWh , so in effect the maximum standing charge.

Suppliers are at liberty to set their own tariffs while conforming to the set maxima, for instance they could charge a zero standing charge and increase the price of units to compensate. The nature of competition, the slim margins in energy supply (don't laugh its absolutely true), and fear of triggering a flight of big users to other suppliers mean that suppliers generally set their variable rates close to the maxima mandated by OFGEM.

I doubt that any of the suppliers would handle things any different - are you going to Octopus?

[wizzo227]

Originally Posted by meldrewreborn

are you going to Octopus?

shshhh! I thought that we weren't supposed to name the competition on this forum.

I firmly believe that in order to get to nil net carbon at minimum cost, we don't stupidly build more gas-burner power stations to only ever be used between 4pm and 8pm before 2035, because that is a big capital cost for small utility for not enough years. Instead we ask for the government to insist that electric vehicle parking meters whose fast recharge can be disabled for the evening peak are, and those which can't be disabled pay a lot extra unless there happens to be shown to be a nearby windmill generating surplus at the time. Sane people could plan ahead and recharge in the car park at work to avoid paying extra at peak times and get their boss to put in 7.2kW interruptible chargers, costing less than building new gas fired peaking power stations and new extra pylons. Disabling one 240 kW Tesla fast recharge point is worth as much to freeing up capacity as at least 120 frugal homes like mine avoiding the 2kW kettle during expensive evening peak hours. My present net usage meter is showing 0.28kW so >800 homes like mine can run on as much power as one fast recharge point.

We still need as much flexibility in time of use as possible. Your suggestion to change to one fixed price all year seems to me to be a bad idea because that is to stop thinking about time and date of use, declare it to be "somebody else's problem" to provide evening peak electricity on the worst day of the year, and everyone pays bigger standing charges for more pylons and stuff like that which won't even be used all of the time.

In moving most households to a price floating <<brand name>> tariff, the money saved from not building and operating more gas peaking power stations, big pylons, gas import terminals, foreign drilling rigs and foreign liquification machinery for shipping is then freed up for more windmill generation. All of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0JDK_71yDg

[meldrewreborn]

@wizzo227

you though are so far from a typical customer as it’s possible to be. Most customers never switch suppliers let alone take a fixed rather than variable tariff product.

whereas some of us at least try to be intelligent customers were very much the exception. That’s why your arguments fall down in my opinion, most customers gripe a lot but really don’t understand much at all about electricity supply.