Thank you, Smartmeter!

If you're actually on the standard tariff, that's the worst place to be. You should be on one of their fixed-for-n-years tariffs, where n is 1 or 2, typically. But remember: after the one or two years, this fixed rate tariff expires and you go back onto standard tariff again, unless you fix with them (or another supplier) to go onto another fixed-for-n-years tariff.

Then you want to be paying by DD, monthly, which typically gets you a discount, and look for the tariff with the lowest unit rate, not necessarily the one with the lowest SC. Finally, note that the lowest rates are for when you do everything online and view your bills there, and chat to assistants via being logged in, too.

We're with EDF who, last May, seemed to have the lowest tariff at the time.

Avoid nPower, who appear to be unable to do billing - remembering that the "supply" company is actually just a billing operation. The volts actually come to us courtesy of UK Power Networks.

Tim - thanks a lot for this ...

Yep -- all that's OK - tariff agreed back in March.

Yep - DD

Didn't know that!

Well I wondered about this (I have just spent an hour first looking for the right Eon phone number, then queuing, then trying to sort things out ... see end of this). Maybe it's "AI" to start with, then a human cuts in at some point? (An educated one?)

Yes indeed. Life used to be so simple, life used to be so simple (quiet sob).

My moment of "revelation" in all of this came when finally talking to the lady with whom I was finally connected after 25 minutes of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik:

She was looking at my account at Eon, and I was looking at their email from March, which described my new tariff. There it was in black and white: Standing Charge 20.545 ppd. *THEN* she said: "that's correct - that's the Gas. The Electric is 21.9 ppd." They had not sent me the tariff for Electric in that email (or any other).

So my Standing Charge is 20.5ppd plus 21.9 ppd = 42.4ppd ... and perhaps the odd 7 pence in my early-morning charge can be attributed to 3 sleeping computers and a freezer going on and off over c.eight hours.

Oh well -- I've only lost an entire morning out of the rest of my diminishing life -- in return for learning a few things.

Cheers all! John

In essence, it will depend on your consumption. You pay the SC once per day, whereas you pay the unit charge once per unit (so, typically, many per day). Reducing the unit cost would (for a given consumption) save more than an increased SC would cost. You'd need to compute where the cross-over point is.

Dealing with all this is prolly easier here as there's no gas, we have to heat with oil.

There are a number of agencies which will offer to take care of switching your suppliers to the cheapest avaiable, tailored to your individual circumstances, on an annual basis without any up front charges.

Google is your friend for details.

It is pretty difficult to find the best deal for your particular usage. Most are a combination of standing and amount used. Both figures can vary depending on circumstances. The one thing you can be sure enough is that a supplier you've been with for a while ain't going to be the best deal.

I use Flipper. I pay them to find the best deal for me. They don't take a commission from the supplier, so have no ulterior motive when seeking the best deal. They also look after all the paperwork when changing supplier

- I don't have to do anything.

I'm sure you could do this yourself. If you have the skills and time. It's a minefield.

What tarrif you want is entirely dependant on your useage. Low use, say up to 3 units a day finding a tarrif with no standing charge but "expensive" unit cost may well be more economic. High use then the unit cost dominates, unless the standing charge is stupidly high... The only real way to select the most economical tarrif is to know your annual useage, the tarrif details and crunch the numbers, a spreadsheet is ideal.

This can get thrown off by "refer a friend" schemes, I've one that currently credits both my account and my "friends" with £100 each when they sign up via my "refer a friend". That £100 credit can make what appears a more expensive tarrif actually cheaper.

I didn't think smart meters reported the standing charge element at all, just useage and cost (I think they get the unit rate(s) over the air).

How many units does the real meter say you use overnight? 50p is around 3.3 units or should be. A standard tariff could be over

If a "night" is 8 hours that gives about 410W base load for 3.3 units consumed or about 310 W baseload for 2.5 units. We run at 330 W base load overnight. I can probably push that well below 300 W by ensuring

How do I know that? I have recently bought a plugin power meter that appears to actually work and deal with low power levels and odd power factors etc. One similar if not the same as this tear down by Big Clive:

Oh and changing supplier is very easy these days, much more so than it was and quicker.

Another John laid this down on his screen :

First mistake.

Second mistake.....

You need to look at changing gas and electric suppliers (also insurers, phone etc.) at least once per year. Stay with them and they put you on a much higher tariff.

This site makes it so easy, will pick out the cheapest supplier and rate them too. It includes ones where the site gets a back hander and ones for which they do not, so no bias involved.

Sign up, tell it your annual gas and electric consumption and it will list the best deals for you personally. If the best deal changes during your contract, they will let you know via email. You can swap without penalty up to 45 days before your contract ends.

I change all my utility, phone and insurers once per year, unless they offer me a 'specially good deal' to stay with them.

Another John explained :

Dual Fuel just means you get both G & E from the one and the same supplier. Usually it means you get a special rate, cheaper than buying from two different suppliers - nothing else. They are both billed entirely separately, but on one bill.

The simplest was is a website which does all of that calculation for you and finds the cheapest source -

Then you need to pay a visit to

Dave Liquorice laid this down on his screen :

That is an awful lot, compared to my baseload.

Modern devices on standby use very little. Some even have two varieties of standby mode when you switch to standby, one which allows instant back on and a much slower mode, which draws almost nothing.

Modern PC's also have the two modes, Hibernate and Standby. Hibernate uses no power, Standby keeps all but the screen working.

Jack Harry Teesdale formulated the question :

They don't do it for nothing, they get a cut.

Martin's site also takes a cut, but also lists the ones where he gets no cut.

Horses for courses:

for my gas bill in the summer, 80% of the bill is SC

in the winter 45%

the SC really makes a big difference to my overall bill

(I have gas CH and instant hot water, not cooking)

F wrote on 14/11/2020 :

John also needs to find out where his power is going, what is using so much. His nightly reported bill was almost as much as my bill for the entire week last week - £8.95 including SC and I have lots of things left on and left on standby.

I get two

they even used to send them out in separate envelopes when I had paper billing

It's all pricing smoke and mirrors anyway. You're going to pay something for your connection to be active, and then you're going to pay for usage. Whether the cost is loaded into the standing charge or the unit tariff is just the supplier using the two knobs it can adjust to offer you a deal. Standing charges aren't daylight robbery, nor are 'no standing charge' tariffs necessarily any better unless you're at the very bottom of the consumption scale.

It's a bit like people complaining about 'line rental' for the landline phone they don't use, when they would still need to pay that fee if they went broadband only. It doesn't matter what they call it, it's what you pay at the end of the day.

To that end, it would be useful if one of the comparison sites plotted all the energy tariffs on a graph with consumption of kWh on the X axis. You would be able to see which tariff is best for your estimated usage, but you'd also see how sensitive it is to variation in consumption. Maybe another tariff would be better if you used slightly more or less - this is currently hard to find out without putting in a range of values into comparison sites.

It varies, but it's often cheaper to go for separate suppliers for electric and gas anyway. Dual fuel often doesn't save you a lot, and many of the smaller supplies only do one or the other.

Theo

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It's something you could do yourself, with a spreadsheet - fine for one or two suppliers, but a lot of work when there are more.

I signed with 'look after my bills' who do that. They were on Dragons Den but that wasn't where I found out about them. Last year they put me with Scottish Power and I didn't notice much difference from Ovo, where I had been before. (Just checked - the last year with Ovo I paid £1,123; last year with SP I paid £1,126, so not much in it. But SP did keep increasing the standing order amount even when I had a healthy credit - when I rang to complain the call center person coukd reduce the amount a bit but not to what it had been, despite me being nearly £300 in credit. A couple of weeks later the credit was reimbursed to me without notice. This year 'look after my bills' put me with People's Energy, which seems cheaper, the standing order is much lower, and I'm still in credit, but not £300. It looks as though my gas/electricity will cost just over £1,000 this year. At the end of last year 'look after my bills' checked that I wanted them to look for a new deal, told me what they had found and asked me to confirm that I wanted to go ahead. That was it. No hassle at all. They are developing a similar system to handle insurance renewals but I didn't sign up for that.

That's why I like Flipper. You pay a fixed fee. No hidden commission to them from the companies they choose for you.