Liz's energy subsidy.

[Stinsy]

What will it be and how will it effect us lot?

I was rather assuming it might be a £50 government subsidy (or whatever) per bill as a line item. However it now seems like the government will fund the energy companies directly in order to "Fix energy prices".

I'd taken Octopus Go 40/7.5p which compared very unfavourably to the SVR at the time (c.28p) but I expected the SVR to rise so took the fix expecting to be better off (on peak rate) for the bigger part of my contract. However if the SVR is "fixed" at c.28p I'll be worse off.

[Oldgreybeard]

I think all we can be absolutely certain about is that the energy companies will do better out of it than consumers will. No Conservative government ever puts the interests of the general population before that of their mates in business.

[cojmh]

Well we shall see soon .... I have been kicking myself for not fixing earlier in the year but it is looking (through sheer luck) that that might have been the best thing to do.

In terms of what it means .... using crude maths.

Currently electricity is about 28p and the "average annual bill is around £2K - (I am rounding for easy numbers here)

All of the places I have been reading are talking about the average annual bill being moved up to £2.5K - so a 25% increase. I am excluding the £400 subsidy as we are looking at the unit rates.

I would assume (again I say this is a crude calculation) that the electricity will go up by roughly the same so from 28p a unit to 35p a unit.

What will also be interesting is how they intend to recoup the £100 billion they are talking about and it would seem that it will mean artificially high rates after the crisis period is over. So, reduction in power use is the only real way to avoid this long term I would say (rather obvious to most of us).

Anyway, that is my 2p worth

[nowty]

I did some very rough maths based on a previous thread where we were looking at bills moving from near £2k per year to £3k per year, so taking an average at a new capped bill of £2.5k per year,

I reckon gas will be about 10p / kWh and leccy will be about 35p / kWh, so I concur with cojmh on the leccy rate.

I have said in the past that the Octopus Go cheapslot roughly matches gas or a little higher, so I expect the cheapslot to rise to circa 10p to 12p / kWh with the peak rate maybe rising as high as 50p. This does assume that the uncapped rates will be ALSO be based upon the capped rates, and not market rates but they may not be.

[Oldgreybeard]

One problem is that the cap isn't applied evenly, suppliers can play tunes with the way they price standard variable tariffs as long as the sum increase, following some sort of made up averaging process, doesn't exceed the cap. This has already had serious implications for those on standard variable tariffs that have dual rates, like Economy 7, for example. All our heating and hot water is at the E7 off-peak tariff. Last winter that was 7.56p/kWh. In April that rose to 17.831p/kWh, way more than the 54% price cap. I'm anticipating that this winter we will be paying at least 25p/kWh for heating and hot water, maybe more.

The local housing association tenants are getting organised about this now, as, like a lot of housing association properties, their homes are all-electric, with off-peak heating and hot water. Ironically, these houses used to all have gas boilers, but they were replaced because of an initiative (that I believe attracted grant funding) with cleaner electric heating. These are people that cannot possibly afford to have their heating bills go up by close to a factor of four from one winter to another.

[Stinsy]

One problem is that the cap isn't applied evenly, suppliers can play tunes with the way they price standard variable tariffs as long as the sum increase, following some sort of made up averaging process, doesn't exceed the cap. This has already had serious implications for those on standard variable tariffs that have dual rates, like Economy 7, for example. All our heating and hot water is at the E7 off-peak tariff. Last winter that was 7.56p/kWh. In April that rose to 17.831p/kWh, way more than the 54% price cap. I'm anticipating that this winter we will be paying at least 25p/kWh for heating and hot water, maybe more.

The local housing association tenants are getting organised about this now, as, like a lot of housing association properties, their homes are all-electric, with off-peak heating and hot water. Ironically, these houses used to all have gas boilers, but they were replaced because of an initiative (that I believe attracted grant funding) with cleaner electric heating. These are people that cannot possibly afford to have their heating bills go up by close to a factor of four from one winter to another.

I really don't understand why anyone would be on Economy7 when they could be on Octopus Go!

[spread-tee]

Reading various commenters it would seem her favourite option is to provide GOVT backed loans to the energy suppliers with interest, which we then pay back with increased bills spread over the next ten years. An excellent example of can kicking which will syphon yet more money out of our pockets into the top 1% It's just possible they won't get away with that in which case the Tories will discover the "magic money tree" just like they did during the pandemic.

We need to get shot of this lot ASAP

Desp

[Oldgreybeard]

I really don't understand why anyone would be on Economy7 when they could be on Octopus Go!

Because Go is unavailable here, that's why. Also Go doesn't have the built in time switch that E7 has, and for the housing association homes that tamper-proof timing is a key requirement. There are still over 4 million E7 users, many of them tied in because there are no other options where they live.

[Stinsy]

I really don't understand why anyone would be on Economy7 when they could be on Octopus Go!

Because Go is unavailable here, that's why. Also Go doesn't have the built in time switch that E7 has, and for the housing association homes that tamper-proof timing is a key requirement. There are still over 4 million E7 users, many of them tied in because there are no other options where they live.

I thought the time-signal that powered the old mechanical meters had been switched off? Also I assumed modern smart-meters to be much more "tamper proof" than the old mechanical ones!

[NikoV6]

£100billion, pretty sure you could insulate every home in the UK for that....