General Chat

Do you want any tips for getting your energy bills down? Hope others will join in if you find my tips worthwhile.

My first tip would be for those with pre-payment meters. Do not go with a company that charges you a standing charge if you spend less than £10 a week on elec. Best company is probably one of the Big Six, who absorb the standing charge into their unit cost. Begins with an "S" (SSE). So for £10 spent, you get £10 worth of elec at about 17p per unit.

Expensive, but cheaper for you if you spend les than £10 a week. If more than £10 pw on pre-payment elec, one of the Big Six who used to sponsor FA Cup and starts with "E" is usually pretty competitive (E.On).

Get gas from same company - usually a discount.

Following tips will be for ordinary credit meters.

For people in the Gloucestershire area.

Energy Saving
Could you make the switch and save?
Worried about rising energy costs? With some firms announcing further price rises for 2013, Gloucestershire County Council wants to support people to get a better deal.
The council is concerned about the impact of rising prices on Gloucestershire residents, particularly older people and those living in fuel poverty. That’s why it is launching the Collective Energy Switch this week to help people get cheaper gas and electricity by working together.
Collective Energy Switching is bulk buying – if a large number of people want to change supplier together they are likely to get a better deal than just one person shopping around and switching on their own. And the more households that register their interest in switching, the more attractive it becomes for an energy supplier to offer a competitive price and the more likely consumers are to achieve significant savings.
Residents need to register their interest with the council in the next couple of weeks. You can do this either online at www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/fairenergy by phoning the council on 01452 425757 from Monday 14th January to Friday 25th January inclusive between 8.30am and 5pm.
People only need to provide basic information at this stage: name, address, contact details, an indication of energy consumption and whether they wish to consider switching for both gas and electricity or electricity only. It’s a good idea to have a recent bill to hand as it makes registering easier and more accurate registration means a more accurate offer.
Cllr **********, Leader, Gloucestershire County Council, said: “Fuel poverty can be a real concern for people, particularly during the winter months. We want to do all we can to help people afford to heat their homes properly. Switching energy supplier is often the best way to save money on your bills, but the process of applying can often put people off. That’s why we’ve signed up to this scheme and we hope as many people as possible will take part. All you need is a recent energy bill and we will do the rest of the work and hopefully get you a better deal.”
Residents who have registered their interest will receive a personalised energy offer during February. Although this is likely to be lower than their current bills, there is no guarantee of this, but there is also no obligation to accept the offer and switch supplier. People only need to sign up to the scheme and make the switch if it works for them.

That sounds excellent scheme, Ann. Think that is happening in a few areas.

Think you will also find my tips useful and be interesting whether you can find a better deal as an individual than taking the collective deal.

My first tip is AVOID comparison sites. Have realised over last few years of switching that you can do an awful lot better by following some simple rules. There is one good use for a comparison site, which I will mention shortly.

Ours is actually fairly reasonable at the moment. (NPower).

Do we have to try and avoid naming companies? Can't remember rules but trying to avoid that. Interesting this morning that all 20 companies have been rated for customer service. There are the Big Six, which includes the one that you mentioned, Ann. And about 14 smaller companies.

How many of the Big Six were in top six in latest tables for customer service. Answer - none. Am I suprised? No. Is the quality of their gas and elec better than the small companies? No.

Right then, here goes/

Step One

Work out approximately (very approximately) how much you are using. A simple way (if no degree in maths) is to work out in a year what you spend. I guessed at £400 for elec, £800 for gas.

Then go onto a comparison site like go.compare.energylinx.co.uk/calc-gocompare.html?db=dual

Fill in the simple form and put the amount you spend on gas and elec. That will give you figures for what you use.

In my case, that is 19,360 Kwhs of gas and 2,725 Kwh of electricity.

Ignore any potential savings from switching at this stage. Will come to that at the end.

We have a power meter free from the power supplier which allows you to see where all the electricity is being used. It integrates with software on the PC. Very effective.

Other things that work well are keeping the windows shut when the weather is freezing cold - it always amazes me, open windows with snow everywhere, ground floor insulation, wearing a woolly jumper rather than turning up the heating, turn off the "standby" gadgets. Not living in Wales, Scotland, eastern England or anywhere north of the A5 also helps no end. If you have the room running a generator with LPG can also save a fair bit after a biggish up front investment.

Our supplier is one of the "biggies" and I have always found their service & billing fine and gas+electricty billing competitive. All the same we have tried others who failed to honour their promises and produced gross and fictitious bills. So we are back with the original and I doubt there will be any more experiments.

Over a period of time retail energy prices tend to cancel out, it is a zero sum game and all you get is a lot of hassle. On top a fair bit of the bill in future will be to subsidise "green" energy and they will all charge the same levy.

Rollo. Those new smart meters are brilliant. And meters can be read 24/7 and bills always "actual". Think it is a planned roll out across the UK. Probabaly companies will concentrate on outlying elec meters first - difficult to access remote rural properties for readings/maintenance/safety checks. Also often in beautiful area where they are "holiday homes".

In meantime, many companies offer free "Smart - type" attachments that enable you to see where you are wasting money if you are good with gadgets. Sounds like you may have one of those.

Am going to try to keep this as simple as possible and not talk about energy saving tips at all. What you have said sounds excellent advice, but not my area of expertise unfortunately. Everybody round here seems to swear by wood burners as there is a lot of wood readily available.

Only put enough water in the kettle for what you need.

We add extra layers before putting the heating on and usually have it off, even when we are indoors, betweem 10.30 am and at least 3.30pm. I usually end up with 4 layers on, less if I am moving around.

I don't think there is anything against naming the companies John. Unless you are libelling them of course :-)

Ann,much better to fill the kettle ,use what you need and put the rest into a thermos Flask. and if you put Clingfilm on the windowframes, after applying use a warm hair drier on it to stretch it taut.**M**

Depend what you use the thermos water for Merlin, prefer not to have tea made with off the boil water really. OK in power cuts though.

We are fortunate as had new double glazing 2 years back, a new front door, wall insuklation and we have sufficient loft insulation. Noticed the difference in our heating bills after having the cavity wall insulation.

Sadly it does,nt make any difference to us, Wehave to have the heating on all the time,Winter and Summer due to Sasha,s Condition,costs a bomb.but needs must. :-(

If you cannot get gas ( or even if you can ) then an air source heat pump is worth consideration. They work like a fridge backwards and can save 40% costs over trad. heating methods. Installation qualifies for various grants and cheap VAT. Worcester Bosch and others have UK approved systems.

As a bonus ASHP can provide very effective summer air conditioning.
Ground heat pumps are more efficient but cost quite a lot more to install .

Solar is useless for electricity without unreliable government grants. It is however terrific with backing up water heating both for heating and kitchen/bathroom.

The big downer is that the most effective heating systems AND the most effective insulation systems tend to demand a fairly high up front cost. The people who most urgently need to reduce heating costs often find these costs far too high or do not control their property and are dependent on the choice of the landlord.

We are on the price promise deal with EDF for electricity and gas. You can input your readings online 24/7 or by phone.

We were paying £40.00 per month DD. When we entered our last reading EDF only took £10.00 out in December because our usage was less than expected.

At least this company doesn't hang onto your money for longer than a month and seem to be fair in offering an immediate reductiion.

The advantage of entering readings whenever you like is that if you use more than expected you can just make an extra payment.

Sue

We are like you Joan; rural area, no gas, high oil prices. We did get the cavity walls insulated for free but no-one would come to do the loft because we live in a chalet type house. There is a lot of roof space and you can stand up in a lot of it but we couldn't get anyone in from government schemes or otherwise. In the end OH did it himself. We were able to buy good quality insulation at a local DIY place at a discount provided we only bought a limited amount - basically enough for one house.

A small tip: If, like us, you have to have oil for heating then buying in larger amounts works out cheaper so, if you ca,n get a big tank (ours holds well over 2000 litres) or combine your delivery with neighbours and buy as a group.

We had solar panel for water heating about 6 years ago along with a new well insulated cylinder.Been quite pleased with it and don't usually have to heat water from May- November ,unless family here using lots for baths etc.
Wasn't cheap to install but is a long term answer.
Also bought some foil panels to put on walls behind radiators which reflect heat back into rooms.

Step One - work out roughly how much gas and electricity you use.

Step Two - Apply some simple rules:

1. Get elec and gas from same supplier
2. Ignore comparison sites and special offers
3. Ignore free presents and free prize draws
4. Pay by direct debit
5. Have paperless billing
6. Avoid fixed price contracts
7. Avoid any contract that is difficult to get out of quickly
8. Review 6 monthly

In other words, keep everything simple and basic in Step 2.

I have to have heating on a lot because of not being able to move about much but still wrap up in duvet a lot .
Wonder how many of us lucky enough to get the weekly cold weather payment will actually use it on fuel, I know when mine comes through this year I will move it straight onto gas account as know it will be up a lot this year, last time we got it we used it to pay for the extra coal we were using but this year we havent had coal fire on gone for the central heating instead.

John, you said avoid comparison websites then you used one in your example didn't you?

Confused in West Wales

Sorry Sue. What I meant is don't use comparison sites for switching. They all seem to be different, don't have all the tariffs, work out comparisons in a strange way. I am suspicious of them. They must get a big backhander for getting people to switch to particular companies and tariffs.

But comparison site are useful for working out much you use in this strange language of Kwhs and Kwh. Well worth getting info off their sites - also one or two companies might catch your eye for Step 3.

Bear with me - only 5 steps in total and I think none of them take more than a few minutes. It is something I have done every 6 months for about 3 years and puts me in total control and seems to save me money. And before that we were with British Gas for 40 years. But brand loyalty means nothing today.

Edit. Some of the posts on this thread are excellent. Some very good tips and some ideas that seem very clever to me. Like the pump that heats in winter and chills in summer. I want to make the 5 points as simple as I can though. It is a minefield for the unwary :-(