Previously I had not found that much variation between tariffs based on our usage, but last time we had this discussion I had a look at some alternatives, and was quite pleasantly surprised to find I could save over a grand a year ditching EDF and going with a smaller player with simpler tariffs.
We were dual fuel split rate electric, new deal charges a fixed rate for electric regardless of which register is accumulated on. So now I am on:
Electric Standing Charge 14.70p per day Electric Unit Rate 12.84p per kWh Gas Standing Charge 14.70p per day Gas Unit Rate 2.28p per kWh
Which is lower unit price and standing charge than previously :-)
The question is, what do they actually have to do for a standing charge on a smart meter? On my meter, a dim one, under normal circumstances, a bod with a little computer has to come and read it, as I am blind, but on a smart one, they presumably get the reading when they want it. OK so they are paying for a data transfer instead of a bod with a computer, but if it was not cost effective, why bother? I on the other hand want a smart meter from EDF, but can't get one since they say, the talking consumer device has issues and they don't want to leave me with no way to read it. But hang on, they don't read it now as under covid, no meter reader comes, and I have to get a sighted bod to read it on the meter and then I email them the readings. I should be billing them for my time in this situation??
But not always. Not having mains gas it's not something I look at very often but did a while back to switch the in laws who do. ISTR that for a given supplier all their electricity tariffs were the same between dual fuel and electric only. Only the gas was a little cheaper under a duel fuel deal. It can still be cheaper to have electric from one supplier and gas from another under single fuel tariffs.
Point of the above is. If you've got a bill so high that there's a grand to save, I'm surprised that you can't save a noticeable amount every year by shopping around.
even a small fraction of a pence per unit, that for me amounts to a few quid a year, has to add up to 40 or 50 for your usage
Lets see what worse case left plugged in, socket on, device switched on or "off" via a soft switch not a hardware one or some form of "standby" at night:
Washing machine, Microwave, DECT repeater, PC x 4, monitor x 3, 16 port gigabit unmanaged switch, DECT handset charger x 3, LED desk strip light PSU, HiFi unit, bedside clock, fish tank pump/filter, laser printer, ethernet to USB printserver, WiFi AP x 2, TV, Humax PVR, Blueray rec/player, landing light (CFL), boiler room light (LED), Wireless thermostat Rx x 2, Solar thermal controller, CH time switch, Stove controller, DECT base, ADSL modem, Weather Station base, 10 port gigabit managed PoE switch, HP Mini Server, APC UPS, Load balancing router, 6 wired smoke alarms, relay base, magnetic door holder.
I don't think I've missed anything, 47 items... or an average of 7 W each for a 329 W base load. Obviously there is quite a range of loads across those items, some really won't be taking very much desk light PSU or smokes but the server, UPS and PoE switch can problem account for 50 W or more. The HiFi unit is terrible, "standby" 10 W, "on" but not reproducing any sound 12 W...
The Humax and Bluray have that and are set to slow mode.
Difficult to keep all of a PC on when the PSU is shut down... The PC's here take about 4 W each when "off". I've not investigated much else with the new plugin power meter, yet...
Previously when I had looked (which was not that often to be honest), I found I could save £50 or so, but not usually enough to make it worth the time/effort in shifting.
Precisely, if I waste an hour or two researching, switching and jumping through whatever hoops are required, it has probably cost me more than the saving in lost billable hours.
Quite, the savings the comparison sites quote are near enough to show if further investigation is worth while. I normally look a month or so before any fixed contract is to run out or if on an open ended variable rate when they push the prices up. Only if the savings are significant, approaching £50, do I bother looking at the details and shoving data into the spreadsheet.
Switching has become far more streamlined and easy to do over the last year or so. Trouble is once you've made that initial big saving from being on the old regional electricity board standard rate it's more likely that it'll only be a price increase reduction method rather than any real saving.
The first time you switch, it generally saves £hundreds moving from shit old tariff to competitive tariff, after that it's under £50, unless you're willing to deal with the class of supplier likely to end up on ofgem's list of suppliers having their customers forcibly transferred away from them ...
Depends, just switched E7 supply and made a real saving of £111/year over the previous suppliers *old* rate. Reason for switching was a hike in the old suplliers price by £217/year meaning I have notional saving of £328/year!
Mind you I have a feeling the small relatively new supplier I've switched to let their website sell me a tariff that should have been "not available to new customers" and they are so automated they haven't noticed yet.
Not overly worried, my contract has no exit fee, so if they do notice and try to shove up the prices I'll just switch away. If they go under, well it depends who Ofgem transfer us to and their rates. There might be arguments over the electronic "paper work" but the lights won't go out.
Given there are only really two values per tariff - standing charge and cost per unit, it wouldn't be hard to plot if that information was widely available. But at present it seems like you need to click through a million suppliers' websites.
I'm very willing to believe your hourly rate is substantial. But having switched 5 times in the past 7 years alone I'd like to offer a few points:
a. accurate comparisons are easy if you know your current tariff(s) and annual consumption in kWh and use a reliable site. I now use Money Saving Expert's. Registration required but the only mails I get are when there's a better deal that matches my criteria
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b. the process of switching has so far gone smoothly. (I did make the mistake of moving to Tonik who have gone bust but that's a different issue - and so far Scottish Power have made a good job of picking up the pieces)
c. end-to-end usually takes me no more than 30 minutes - of which 10 minutes or more is taken up by me being paranoid and putting the quoted unit rates and standing charges into my own spreadsheet to check I get the same costs
d. saving compared with staying with the provider's best offer has so far never been less than £100 a year - and that excludes the £25 or so cashback we've had more than once
There has been only one cockup here due to the MPAN database having incorrect address information for the supplies (we have three for historical reasons). So the wrong one got switched, took a while to switch back and the right one switched but wasn't great hassle.
I've since managed, I hope, to get the MPAN database information corrected. And it probably wouldn't be a problem for most people with only a single supply at a single adddress.
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