Energy cap price rise

Fairly big install. 8.3kW panels and a single tesla battery for now.
Works out about £23k. Discussing if to reduce the size and if the battery is worth it.

We had a 5kW array installed last October and are waiting for delivery of our 13.5kWh Tesla Powerwall end of April. Based on my experience over winter I’d say if your house is unoccupied during the day then battery storage is a must because even if you use solar to heat your water tank, have washing machines on timers etc then most of your generation will go to the grid for a measly 7.5p per kWh (export guarantee with Octopus). Even if you have an EV that will probably be sitting in the work car park so you can’t capture any solar generation with it.

Like you me and Mrs Uponthedowns work from home so our house is occupied during the day but even in the depths of winter there’s surplus solar for 2-3 hours on a sunny day which I’m soaking up charging our EV but this will go into the Powerwall eventually. Having a Powerwall will also allow you to take full advantage of a time based tariff like Octopus Go so in winter if there is not enough solar to charge your battery during the day the Powerwall will charge at night on cheap rate for use next day. The Powerwall even looks at the weather forecast and decides automatically if it should charge at night or wait for the sun the next day.

With octopus of you have a tesla battery you can get the tesla tariff which has import and export of electric at 11p/kWh which should help on payback.
But i am still wondering if it will payback. Looking at 20+ year life span so i would hope it is paid back by then

Already had mine go from £79 to £144 when the supplier went bust. Best start saving to make it through next winter and another price rise.

@goslow this is doing my head in too. I wouldnt expect to find some actual useful figures in the dross red top articles, but I cant even find on the Ofgem press release exactly what the figures are?

Because as I have the ability to add up and multiply and as @simon_g says

Octopus make it easy to pull out your previous energy usage

then I’d like to actually work it out.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/check-if-energy-price-cap-affects-you

Can anyone actually work out, what the price cap ACTUALLY is? I cant find it!?

Standing charge and ppkwh for Gas and Electric? I dont really care about Mr and Mrs Joe Blogs and there 2.4 children!

With a big battery you could get close to 100% as you’ll have free leccy 24/7.

True

But, it would have to be a big enough battery and panel to take you completely off grid, especially in the middle of winter and if you were currently consuming £383 of electricity a month.

The long term way out of the energy crisis is to invest in these technologies as well as insulation, but for the vast majority of people its going to be uneconomic to do so.

Energy prices in Spain increased for us towards the end of last year after the electric company raised prices and changed from a 2 tariff to a 3 tariff system in June.

The new low tariff is the old normal tariff, the new normal tariff is the old peak tariff and the new peak tariff is the old peak tariff on steroids. No one actually believed the blurb that told them they would be better off with the new 3 tariff system – and as far as I know, no one is.

I can access our account on-line and watch our daily consumption – which does give you an idea of what to expect on your next bi-monthly bill, but since we’re pretty careful already we really have nowhere to go in terms of being more careful. We do almost nothing electrical except run the fridge during the peak period and we already run the washing machine and dish washer (infrequently) before we go to bed just after midnight on the low rate.

Don’t understand that, corporation tax rate in the UK is going up to 25% and it’s 15% in Ireland? (Is Ireland not ‘developed’?)

Must mean that tax breaks for oil companies are best in the UK or something

But i am still wondering if it will payback. Looking at 20+ year life span so i would hope it is paid back by then

No way i’d be looking at a payback period of 20 years.

Technology is advancing at such a rate, that in 5 years you could have a system thats twice as effective for half the price.

I’m doing a lot of work, at work, to look at these types of technology across 35,000 properties, spending multiple times the amount you’re looking at.
We wouldnt entertain any investment that didnt pay for itself over a 10 year period.

@intheborders

Yes, and then I posted on Twitter asking for folk to list the frauds that were possible and what do they estimate the likely write-off will be by 2027.

Take the rebate 2021. Move to a Band E house in another local authority in 2022. Bet you it doesnt get repaid!

@snotrag

MSE:

Under the new cap, the rates on average (it varies by region) are about 7p/kWh for gas, with a standing charge of 27p per day. For electricity, it’s about 28p/kWh, with a standing charge of 45p per day.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/02/energy-bills-set-to-rocket-for-millions-as-ofgem-confirms-new-pr/

Thanks, thats more like it. Ridiculous that its found on a consumer advice website not the actual organisation that is responsbile.

Anyone moved from Pure Planet to Shell?

Think they’ve messed up the transfer as my personal projection is showing as £28,817 a year.

so I’m on a flexible tarrif with octopus, based on the last years figures:

2900 kWh Electric @ 21p/unit & 26p/day standing charge

3300 kWh Gas @ 4p/unit & 24p/day standing charge

that works out at £950/yr total which ties up with my DD of £105 and the £300 I’m currently in credit.

using those numbers up there, if I use the same amount this next year, it works out at £1350/yr.

when I looked at a fixed price tariff a couple of months back the cheapest on offer was ~£2000/yr.

am I missing something?

The average family in the UK is going to have to face the following increased annual costs:

£720 NI. (based on 2 people working on average UK income)
£75 Council Tax.
£390 Food.
£300 Vehicle Fuel.
£693 Gas/Electric
£800 increased mortgage payments.

Don’t forget that if you’re under about 30 and a graduate, your student loan repayment threshold is being frozen this year, which Martin Lewis reckons will effectively cost about about £110 a year.

@jam-bo

No. The fixed price tariffs available are very high and give an indicator that the utility suppliers expect the worst for the next year.

Do you mean 13300 kw for gas?

@jam-bo

You weren’t on their best tariff. So your increase may be less in percentage terms than the headlines. My Octopus fixed ends in March. Current rates
Elec 16.2 per Kwh Gas 2.8p per Kwh.

Current fixes are higher than the standard variable rate because future price rises are priced in.

So I’m looking at a near 100% increase in April. £94 to around £170 or £175 per month allowing for being in a bit of credit at the moment.

Do you mean 13300 kw for gas?

no, i used 318 cubic metres of gas last year, based on what I could find the conversion to kWH is ~10x

1880’s mid terrace 3bed in the sub-tropical SW.

I’d probably get a better return on mini-hydroelectric installed in my gutter downpipes than solar…

when I looked at a fixed price tariff a couple of months back the cheapest on offer was ~£2000/yr.

Fixed price tariffs aren’t subject to the cap. They do their calculations with predictions on where wohlesale costs will go, and currently those are very high.

The cap has flipped everything on its head – it exists to protect consumers who’d fall off cheaper fixed deals and then get charged a very high rate if they didn’t bother to find a new tariff. Now though the cap is limiting the max you can get charged so almost everyone is better off taking the capped rate rather than a fixed deal.

It’s going to be very hard for the energy companies bound by the cap but who have to buy at open wholesale rates – when renewables are low (less sun/wind) and demand is high they can be paying much, much more than the cap rates. Expecting even more of them to fail over the next year.

it strikes me then that the cap is only beneficial to those over it, surely those under it are providing subsidy.

Doesn’t work like that. It’s a cap on unit and standing order charges, if you’re above average use, you’ll still pay more! And less if you are under.

It’s going to be very hard for the energy companies bound by the cap but who have to buy at open wholesale rates

That’s what hedging is for. The ones that went bust already were small players who didn’t have the financial capacity to do enough hedging, and got caught out by the disparity between wholesale costs and tariff charges.

Now water going up 1.7%

Ffs

jam-bo
Full Member
it strikes me then that the cap is only beneficial to those over it, surely those under it are providing subsidy.

You can’t be under the cap. The cap is On the unit price of energy and the daily charge.

The ‘cap’ figure which keeps getting mentioned (£1277 currently i think) is the cost of annual energy use at the capped rate.

This isn’t the Brexit i voted for. Where’s the global warming they promised us, that’s what i wants to know. I was expecting 15c winters and 30c summer temps but they lied to us sbout that and the 35,000,000 other thing. Although i think they forgot to type the brackets on the side of the bus.
Just need a run on inflation where it hits 10% them we really will be in trouble, as the millions of people scraping by with a £450 pcm mtg today will simply not have a cat in hells chance of covering a £1k+payment.
Be like the 80s again.

The ‘cap’ figure which keeps getting mentioned (£1277 currently i think) is the cost of annual energy use at the capped rate.

… the AVERAGE cost of annual energy use …

Which is why it’s meaningless as you need to be able to compare the unit and standing charges against fixed tariff prices as snotrag said up there. ☝

You can’t be under the cap. The cap is On the unit price of energy and the daily charge.

The ‘cap’ figure which keeps getting mentioned (£1277 currently i think) is the cost of annual energy use at the capped rate.

thats what i’d missed. I assumed that it meant once you hit the magic number, that was the most you could be charged in a year. didn’t make much sense.

Under the new cap, the rates on average (it varies by region) are about 7p/kWh for gas, with a standing charge of 27p per day. For electricity, it’s about 28p/kWh, with a standing charge of 45p per day.

Crikey, my deal ends in May 2022, looks like Gas Kwh is nearly tripling, 12 pence extra on the elec kwh and a doubling of the elec DSC! crikey

thats what i’d missed. I assumed that it meant once you hit the magic number, that was the most you could be charged in a year. didn’t make much sense.

If only, my house would be like an oven if that was the case :D

Be nice if the general public hadn’t said no to every new nuclear site, given that existing ones are limited in the number of reactors they can put on them.

Next winter, pensioners are in the crap. Working families on minimum wage are up the crapper. The government have done a good job in destroying community cohesion so there won’t be the possibility of a general strike (in order to nationalise, or subsidise power) to threaten the rich bugger’s revenue stream.

Be nice if the general public hadn’t said no to every new nuclear site, given that existing ones are limited in the number of reactors they can put on them.

UK PLC has not had a proper energy strategy for decades. We’ve had successive governments fudge the issue / ignore it and blow hot / cold on wind / nuclear / solar for as long as I can remember.

As for gas storage, they decided to say a few million and shut down our largest storage facility as it wasn’t being used much. The markets change and suddenly gas costs a fortune and we don’t have any storage.

A failure of leadership / vision at the highest level.

For remaining energy companies, is there any publicly available information on when their current hedges unwind?
Would be interesting but probably deemed to be commercially sensitive.

I remember sitting in a Conference in Westminster nearly 25 years ago with succession of industry executives pleading for a energy policy and strategy that could be used to drive investment in things like infrastructure, training, skills. It hasn’t happened because we’ve had government after government with no real knowledge outside the Westminster bubble. Even the big investments in nuclear has depended on foreign investment and industrial capability because there’s not much left in the UK.
There was a concerted effort at the time to de-nationalise, even things like decades of nuclear waste liabilities. When projects got in the do-do, BNFL tried to sue their sub-contractors for their own incompetence – one of the reasons why Rolls-Royce pulled out of Civil Nuclear.

As for gas storage, they decided to say a few million and shut down our largest storage facility as it wasn’t being used much.

IIRC, Rough was knackered anyway because the geology was failing. Don’t think it was entirely a commercial reason, although the safety angle could have just been a ruse to get additional funding for critical national infrastructure of course.

Just to clarify in practice the £200 bill-credit 'loan' on all home elec bills in Oct.

– every bill will reduce by £200
– every bill after Apr 23 increases by £40/yr for 5yrs regardless of if you got the £200 or not.

Its a 1yr bill reduction followed by a 5yr compulsory levy.

— Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) February 4, 2022

so you can’t opt out of the loan

Its basically just kicking the can down the road, in the hope that energy prices will reduce in the medium term.

Unfortunately the general public are seeing the headlines of £350 for every household

(i’d also expect council tax to increase over time to recover the £150)

Its basically just kicking the can down the road, in the hope that energy prices will reduce in the medium term.

That has been UK PLC’s energy policy for the last 30 years, so hardly surprising!

Spekkie and other Spanish users – check what potencia you are contracted to, you can make 1 change foc per year on the app. I have reduced mine twice, the simulator on iberdrola website is pretty accurate. Also, I went to the local iberdrola office and said I m switching supplier, it was a bluff, they put me on a 15% discount and an annual fixed price.

I m on the day night plan too, all the above my bills are about half what they were, same consumption.

tthew
Full Member
The ‘cap’ figure which keeps getting mentioned (£1277 currently i think) is the cost of annual energy use at the capped rate.

… the AVERAGE cost of annual energy use …

Which is why it’s meaningless as you need to be able to compare the unit and standing charges against fixed tariff prices as snotrag said up there. ☝

Yeah that’s what I meant to write…

Currently on a fix, just calculated ours will go from £1704 to £3223 per year in September if we don’t cut our usage

Just had Email telling me my Octopus go rate ends next month.
New go rate doubles the on peak tarif to >30p/kwh (previously 13p/kWh).
From what I can see it’s priced to make the variable rate very attractive with their “calculations” making the flexible rate ONLY £300 increase than their predicted £500.
Fro reference my total electric cost last 12 month was just over £500 (Am already very careful with usage and it’s only me in the house most of the time).

Next winter will be interesting, am more worried about my mum who refuses to come off her PAYG meter.

Octopus has just upped our monthly DD by 20% (extra £17 on top of £81) which seems a bit low. Wonder if it is based on the existing capped value and not the new values coming in next month…..

We’re already on the current capped variable rate and just been told when the cap is raised on 1 April our annual charge will go from c£1430 to £2300 per year. So £870 or 60% rise. I guess this is before the £200 loan back

I assume the impact will be similar for everyone else already on variable rates. If you are coming off a fix it will be bigger.

Actual tariffs:

Your electricity rates will change from 20.076p to 27.358p per kWh and your standing charge per day will change from 26.82p to 48.52p.
Your gas rates will change from 3.983p to 7.280p per kWh and your standing charge per day will change from 26.11p to 27.22p.