British Gas

Its no surprise to anyone,that Gas/Electricity has gone up. I,ve just seen an advert on the T.v saying they will CAP prices till 2011.

What are your veiws on this and will anybody be Capping there Energy bills???????

 

I have just fixed my energy prices, but believe that capping is a better option, because fixed prices will stay the same whether the price goes up or down, whereas capped prices will go down with costs as they drop. If that makes any sense!

P.s. Thanks for that link JWK, my cousin's been talking about it for ages, and been on at me to sign up for the e-mails - she swears by them! I've done it now!

 

If you cap or fix til whenever, does this mean you are locked in to that supplier til then?

Sounds fishy to me.

 

If I remember rightly, British gas told me I wasn't locked to them lollipop...

 

"Energy Saving Monitor (shows the amount of energy being used in the house) - I've no idea if its any good but I do like gadgets so I might"

I've got one of them in the hall. Definitely makes the family notice when the energy "burn rate" is high, and on one occasion when we were about to go out an investigation of an absurdly high reading turned out to be both electric ovens left on (which could have resulted in more than just a large bill, of course)

I believe there are better systems now - I think the idea is that your meter is replaced (or augmented maybe?) by a wireless transmitter which sends the readings to the Leccy company (hourly??) and then you can review usage after-the-fact with pretty graphs and the like (InterWebBrowserThingie I suppose)

We've cut our Electricity and Oil (CH) use by 30% in each of the last two years, so down by 50% in those two years. We've done things like:

Nothing left on standby (except Sky+ box when recording) - everything has 4-way-extension leads so that TV/DVD/etc. can all be turned off in one go.

Low-energy bulbs (we had that already in 80% of the light sockets)

We have Economy-7 tariff, so now have Dishwasher etc. used mostly on a night-time cycle.

Got rid of an old, knackered, American style fridge/freezer. That alone was using £250 p.a. of leccy :(

Cleaned the air filters of all fridges / freezers - that saved more than I was expecting (forgotten exactly how much now though)

No outside lights etc. More things moved to timers - pumps etc. Also the phone chargers are on an adaptor block on a timer - so they charge overnight - or you press the 1-hour-boost button if you need something charging NOW

Insulated house better, made some adjustments to boiler, and so on. But about to throw the oil boiler away and replace with log burning boiler and some solar panels to reduce out planet-rape some more.

Reduced water usage by having rainwater storage for garden (more work to do there) and putting a pipe from the house downpipe into the pond (that's worked well THIS year!!!). Planning a rainwater harvesting system and replacing the sceptic tank thingie with a digester (Yuck!) that will give me all our household water usage back as irrigation water. You wait until you see the size of my Tomatoes next year!!

 

I think the very fact that they offer fixed or capped pricing just proves they are ripping us off. If they can say with certainty that they can still profit if they fix or cap the prices, even if there are unforeseen increases in production and distribution costs, then obviously they are charging extra to insure themselves against such increased costs.

If I say I will drive my car for 500 miles to deliver something, and the price will be capped at 100 quid, then while that covers my fuel at todays prices it doesn't leave much room for price rises. So if I was going to cap my price for the next 12 months I would promise that I'll do it for maybe 200 quid instead, then if for one month it cost 210, I'd still have made loads by charging too much at todays prices.

 

I reckon it has more to do with reducing the number of people who switch supplier.

Plus they will be able to budget what their income will be. Any maybe they can forward-buy from their suppliers at a fixed rate - as BA do, for example - and are thus passing on that benefit.

But I'm guessing ...

Can't speak about how much profit they are making on fuel-sales though. Even if it is wafer-thin when you multiply by the number of customers and KWh's they use, I expect that comes to quite-a-large-number.

 

Some good tips there kristen - maybe worth starting it's own thread? I have just spent two days re-fitting insulating stuff around our vestibule door - had to remove it when it was prime suspect for the door not closing properly (it wasn't the culprit in the end), and putting up a curtain between our kitchen and dining room. Wish I could afford to have solar panels installed, I'd have a wee windmill too if I could. But am i right in thinking it's really the GAS that's rising in price?

 

"Wish I could afford to have solar panels installed"

Have a look at www.Navitron.org - prices and kit suitable for DIY install. Mind you, that may not make it cheap enough to want to afford, but it isn't the scandalous £10,000 ripoff price of the Cowboy installers either!

"I'd have a wee windmill too if I could"

Chocolate teapot I'm afraid :( You need a socking great big fan on top of a very tall mast with completely clear, flat, uninterrupted views to the South West (prevailing wind) with little in the way of buildings or trees around and behind the mast too. Anything less than that means that the turbulence will rule out most of the potential, and the thing will run at 10% or so of what you would get with clear views - that increases the payback time by a factor of 10, which doesn't bode well!

Its annoying because I'm right out in the country with fields around me but we do have plenty of trees on the plot and I don't think I'll be able to do wind-generation :( I'll love to be making my own electricity because then we could revert to an everything-on lifestyle! I am planning to get a wind speed recording gadget, and a tall mast, and record the windspeed to see whether the site might be OK after all

"ut am i right in thinking it's really the GAS that's rising in price?"

All of them, I'm afraid - even Water (5% above inflation, or somesuch, I think I heard)

 

Thanks John. I have the viewpoint that heat-pump is well suited to under-floor-heating, as UFH requires a lower temperature than Radiators, but for Rads having to "pump" the heat to a higher temperature is not so efficient. "Expensive piece of kit, cheap to run" Would also be good if I could mostly run it on Ecconomy-7 - which a thermal store would help with, of course.

We want to build an extension, and I definitely would be keen on UFH for that.

Current plan is a huge thermal store, lots of solar panels (so that we can get some heat gain even in Spring / Autumn) and then a log burning boiler. Sun and/or Boiler will heat the Thermal Store, and that will circulate round the Rads. Coil within the top of the Thermal Store will heat mains-cold-water to provide domestic hot water (at mains-pressure, Natch!). Pump will trigger when there is a demand for hot water [turn a tap on] so that hot water is quickly available at the tap [loop it round back to the heat exchanger coil] - without having to run cold down-the-drain waiting for it to run hot.

But its dependant on a re-mortgaging process which went a bit pear-shaped because the clever-bod-who-knew was on holiday and in his absence the long-stop fumbled the catch :( so we are back at square one, and the Winter draws closer given the lead time for these sorts of building projects.