Current deal ends in a week.

Estimated usage costs jump us from £117 to £205 (variable) despite running in credit at the moment for both gas and electricity.

There is an option to fix for 2 years at £280 a month which is a huge increase from what we are paying at the moment. Pretty nominal exit fee for early exit though which is a bonus and does offer a little protection.

Now I had this conversation with friends and family back in September when they were in a similar boat and a number are kicking themselves they didn’t go with a fixed rate then given the cost increases we have seen since.

Yes there are predicted increases in October but will they be as high as expected?

What are others doing at the moment?

If you do go for the fix it’s not a 100% guarantee you will be protected from price rises, eg If your supplier goes bust you will be transferred to a new supplier on their variable rate, your fix will be no more.

@julians Agreed. That said, without naming names, I would be surprised if this lot disappear.

eg If your supplier goes bust you will be transferred to a new supplier on their variable rate, your fix will be no more.

As no doubt many of us on here can attest

I’ve gambled that the predictions come true, and taken a new fix deal.
The thinking is that it doesn’t matter too much right now whilst it’s summer and we’re using less, but by the time the next cap increase comes round in October? the fixed rate will be lower that whatever the standard variable ends up at.
It’s british gas, existing customers only, 35% increase over current rate, fixed deal; despite the forecasts it still feels like madness to to sign up for something that much higher than what I pay now.

I got moved to Shell last year when Green went belly up.

Having a quick compare session reveals that I’m on one of the best rates going ATM, maybe save £5 a year

Flexible 7

Electric……………………………………………Gas
Unit rate per kWh: 27.090p ……………..  Unit rate per kWh: 7.225p
Standing charge: 48.91p per day………. Standing charge: 27.22p per day

I’ll just stick with that for now as there are no exit fees

Martin Lewis (moneysavingexpert) gives advice most weeks and for majority of cases, the answer is no.
The price cap will be lower than most fixes on offer right now (as they have already priced in Octobers price cap rise)

This video is a month old, but relevant

The price cap will be reviewed every 3 months, whereas there are existing customer fixes available for a 37-42% premium over the current price cap, that lock in a price for one or two years. Could win, could lose, and a £200 exit fee.

Wholesale gas prices +20% in last two days; in part caused by russia limiting nordstream 1 to 20% of capacity.
This has potential to blow energy price cap forecasts out of the water.
Time for sunak and truss to be asked very pointed questions about how they will help the increasing numbers of people who really truly are out of options; they have no meaningful answers.

Time for sunak and truss to be asked very pointed questions about how they will help the increasing numbers of people who really truly are out of options; they have no meaningful answers.

Of course there is. Remove VAT from gas and electricity. Remove green subsidies from consumer bills. They can either be paid by borrowing or from taxation where those who can afford it pay more.

Get fracking.

whether either of them will do this come Sept who knows?

Until sunak’s latest emission late this evening there had been no commitment from either of them.
Anything either say is merely wordsmithing to persuade the tory party membership.
There is no moral, legal or contractual obligation for either of them to fulfill their promises or commitments; words are cheap – and completely meaningless when uttered by politicians.

Get fracking.

Wouldn’t lead to lower prices.

It will lead to small earthquakes in Lancashire

4 000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire?

How many to fill the Albert hall?

Suppliers had been losing money on the price cap whereas in the past they’d made money hand over fist on variable rates – hence why so many went bust.

Going forward they are going to continue to lose on capped rates, so they will have to make their money on the fixed rates – there will be a good degree of hedging in their prices.

Other than that – your choice, you might be smarter than them on the degree of hedging needed.

Of course there is. Remove VAT from gas and electricity. Remove green subsidies from consumer bills. They can either be paid by borrowing or from taxation where those who can afford it pay more.

Get fracking.

Better would be for a farsighted U.K. party to do what should have been started with the 1970s energy crisis: move to mostly sustainable energy sources; abandon coal completely; legislate for effectively insulated homes; incentivise insulation of existing homes (not subsidise); tax emissions heavily.

If only we had a ground-source-heated hot tub time machine…

And eliminate the evil that is VAT completely.

Time for sunak and truss to be asked very pointed questions about how they will help the increasing numbers of people who really truly are out of options; they have no clue meaningful answers

Agreed. What they’re saying now is for their own MPs, less for the countries. I expect no change from business as usual for politics in the U.K.

Current deal ends in a week.

Estimated usage costs jump us from £117 to £205 (variable) despite running in credit at the moment for both gas and electricity.

There is an option to fix for 2 years at £280 a month which is a huge increase from what we are paying at the moment. Pretty nominal exit fee for early exit though which is a bonus and does offer a little protection.

Now I had this conversation with friends and family back in September when they were in a similar boat and a number are kicking themselves they didn’t go with a fixed rate then given the cost increases we have seen since.

Yes there are predicted increases in October but will they be as high as expected?

What are others doing at the moment?

What are the unit rates on your fixed offer?

Current estimate for the October cap is around £3200-3500 with unit rates around 45ppkWh for electricity and 14ppkWh for gas, standing charges are expected to go up but not by much. However there’s been another large rise in the wholesale gas prices this week so all bets are off.

I’m staying on variable with Shell – decision based on nothing more that gut instinct! 🙂

Cost breakdown for your energy units

Although removing VAT would help, it won’t have the impact necessary to fix the situation for the worst off. There needs to be some proper strategic intervention in order to source O&G supply that doesn’t rely on the same locations as everyone else. Increased North Sea production, a supply contract with Tunisia or Algeria, re-establishing pipelines from North Africa to Europe…

But reducing VAT is not a cure to the rapidly escalating prices.

Of course the inevitable conclusion is that the move to sustainable self sufficient renewable energy needs to be accelerated with national investment in infrastructure (not to be confused with begging shell to accelerate green project investment).

how much can it go up?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62318376

we are still on a fixed and not had the increase affect us yet. who else is in a similar position? I wonder what happens when everyone who is on a fixed has their rate change ?

£3850, wow.

A lot of people are struggling massively to make ends meet now, come mid winter, those and a low more are truly in deep do do. I can’t see truss or be sunak protecting them vulnerable.

There needs to be some proper strategic intervention in order to source O&G supply that doesn’t rely on the same locations as everyone else. Increased North Sea production, a supply contract with Tunisia or Algeria, re-establishing pipelines from North Africa to Europe…

Not sure this would really help as the price of gas and oil is largely set on an international market. So even now we have a situation where the cost of getting gas out of the grouhd has not changed but the price on the market has gone through the roof. On top of that our domestic energy market is screwed so the price of electricity is controlled by the price of gas, even though a large proportion is generated by renewables.

I’m also shell since green went to the wall let year. Tough to choose but currently I’m sticking with it. Although I use much more electricity than gas so a deal with cheaper electric could make a saving for me.

Blimey. Just ran my details through uSwitch and the cheapest fixed tariff is over £500pcm, whereas I’m currently paying £200pcm and building credit.

That’s a 250% increase, against a projected rise in October of c50%. Are they taking the Mickey?

NEWS: It gets worse!
I've just got uodated price cap predictions from @CornwallInsight.

The latest spike in year-ahead wholesale price means the OCT cap prediction is now UP 78% (so £3,500/yr on typical bills) & likely up again in Jan.

Its will be desperate. Intervention needed

— Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) July 27, 2022

People are going to freeze to death this winter. In Britain. In 2022.

No tory MPs will freeze to death this winter.

So even now we have a situation where the cost of getting gas out of the grouhd has not changed

Source ? The cost of everything* related to getting oil out the ground has doubled if not trebled…… Even the cost of the gas needed to get the gas out the ground….

*Raw materials -labour – machine time , chemicals , intervention spreads etc etc

@DrJ you are of course correct that even sourcing from elsewhere won’t quickly fix the problem, it will improve the supply side situation by increasing production capacity away from the FSU.

A point people generally seem to be missing is that there is also a huge impact on the energy cost caused by our poor showing on the currency market. Consecutive cock ups and embarrassments have put the GBP/USD down to around $1.20 to the £. Oil and gas are still bought and sold in USD so we are about 20% worse off than we would have been in early 2016. Neither of the candidates to lead us to a bright new future have been asked about currency stability, who knows where that will end up.

Regarding the original question Mark, I think the energy companies are pricing in massive increases with their fixed rates, there is always a chance they are underestimating but they will certainly have hedged in the medium term.

People are going to freeze to death this winter. In Britain. In 2022.

And the terrifying thing is that the people in charge couldn’t give a **** about these people.

I’m genuinely saddened and embarrassed by this country.

12% increase in the cap last October, 54% in march, current prediction another 78% in the coming October, that’s a 307% rise in 12 months! And that’s just the cap. Most of us were on a deal much lower than the cap so factor in that and most of us will have seen 350-400% increase in the cost of our energy in a 12 month period.

My fixed deal ends in March/April; I’m paying £140/month, am in credit and count myself as fortunate to be on that deal.
I’m even more fortunate that I can afford the current projections – and more.
Costs of energy, fuel, food and everything else you can think of – including macdonalds cheeseburgers – going up.
US Fed have just increased base rate by 0.75 %-age points; expect BoE MPC to follow.
An increasing number of people have no options, no money, no solutions, nowhere to turn.
Help and support from the governing party is completely absent.
My expectation? A massive increase in number of excess deaths some of which will be due to covid; increase in suicides; increase in shoplifting; increase in burglaries; possibility of civil protests and disobediance.
The so-called silent majority will stop being silent.
This is a really poisonous brew.
As for energy prices – immediately…remove green levy and vat; follow the french lead and cap unit price increases (10%?), freeze the standing charge.

follow the french lead and cap unit price increases (10%?), freeze the standing charge

If you cap the unit price increases when energy is more expensive than it was the companies won’t have the cash to buy energy to sell to you – probably leads to energy rationing. Yes some have been making profits, but more have been going bust – there isn’t much cash in the system.

If you freeze the unit cost (which has mainly been rising due to the costs of looking after the customers who were supplied by companies that have now gone bust) then you will struggle to get anyone to look after customers whose suppliers have gone bust. That’s already happening.

And you could clamp down on the electricity distribution companies and their portion of the bill – that’s about £8 a month for a domestic customer (so not that much to go at in the several hundred pounds of monthly bill) and pays for investment in the network that feeds you (we could perhaps delay that but not without consequences) but it also pays for folk working every waking hour after storms and the like.  Not that we had the worst storm season in living memory this year.

There is no easy answer.  The best answer is probably more insulation, a couple of degrees off your thermostat (no more please), more wind, more PV and more nuclear. And start soon enough (which was a long time ago for nuclear, but less so for  insulation, thermostats and maybe PV).

And as a stopgap grants, benefits and tax breaks.

Maybe voltage reduction too.

So what you’re saying is that privatisation was wrong as it diverted huge sums of money to newly minted shareholders and owners when if could – and should – have been used to support consumers.
The best short-term answer is for government to shake the magic money tree.
Ah, just remembered the magic money tree can only be used if there’s an immediate benefit to the tories.
Scrub that suggestion.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-25/london-s-record-9-724-54-per-megawatt-hour-to-avoid-a-blackout

stuff like this isn’t going to help either

@frankconway – Privatisation has probably been nothing but good in the networks area – more mixed in the energy supply area.
If you dig around you’ll find I work for an electricity network company – we don’t buy electricity, selll it, make it or bill you for it – we simply transport it.  And we are heavily regulated.

Since privatisation we are around half the cost we used to be in real terms, we invest more, we have 20% of the safety incidents we used to (and we look harder for them), customer service has improved (and we’ll make it better still) and reliability is massively better (please don’t mention Arwen – it really is better the vast majority of the time, but that wasn’t fun).

Until a couple of years ago we hadn’t paid a dividend to our owners in almost 20 years (capital growth was accepted as sufficient).

So I’d say customers got a decent deal from networks privatisation. And I am proud to be part of that.  I am also clear the job is not yet finished (probably never will be).

The case is harder to make for energy supply companies.

As for short term and magic money trees – I don’t have better short term answers. Killing the income energy companies need to buy the energy to sell to customers is going to crash the system and see lights going out.

I wish I did have better answers.

igm – the fragmentation caused by privatisation is, I think, a net negative for customers.
I accept that some parts of the fragmented system may work better now than
pre-privatisation but many parts don’t work better and/or are significantly more expensive than before after allowing for inflation.

I was aware from previous posts that you’re involved in networks – presumably with a DNO.

Same as you, I wish I had better answers – or any meaningful answer.

No tory MPs will freeze to death this winter.

Their deaths will need to be messy and protracted to encourage the rest!

That Martin Lewis interview on R4 just now was pretty sobering.