Energy Companies

[ButterflyMoon]

Well now autumn has set in and what news today. SSE upping bills by 8.2%. How on earth do these people expect folk to find the money to heat homes when a vast majority of them have been living with wage freezes for the last few years!!! I fully expect the rest of the 'big six' will join in the fun of screwing us all over.

[Sunnyknight]

Flueless gas fires. Cost next to nothing for me on my bill. My room fills up with heat in 5 mins... and is good for an hour.... so we turn it off. Bobs yer uncle.

[unixman_again]

I just hide under the duvet, with someone else to keep warm with.

[sted]

Well now autumn has set in and what news today. SSE upping bills by 8.2%. How on earth do these people expect folk to find the money to heat homes when a vast majority of them have been living with wage freezes for the last few years!!! I fully expect the rest of the 'big six' will join in the fun of screwing us all over.

 

its a company the exist to make money end of story. They will charge whatever they think they can get away with and something like leccy/gas you cant live without so youre screwed as youre a captive audience and as soon as one supplier ups it the rest will follow

[nicholab]

Something to remember is that the average indoor temperature in the 1950 was 18 degrees C today it is something in the 20's that a lot of energy that could be saved turning down the thermostat. I miss the days when I was a kid wearing my vest, t-shirt and jumper indoors every where is now too hot!!!

 

I fitted a room thermostat to my heating system meaning that I have 6 temperature times throughout the day.

[AMLinington]

I suffer terribly with the cold - I'm really sensitive to it and it causes the arthritis in my knees to go bananas so I've taken to storing blankets all over the house and regularly curl up under one in winter. But that isn't really the point - we shouldn't HAVE to struggle in chilly, damp houses only to read that the energy companies are announcing record profits - it's greed. Pure and simple. It's about time the government stepped in and put a stop to the exploitation. Except they won't. Because privatisation was a Conservative initiative in the first place...

[DT2]

I suffer terribly with the cold - I'm really sensitive to it and it causes the arthritis in my knees to go bananas so I've taken to storing blankets all over the house and regularly curl up under one in winter. But that isn't really the point - we shouldn't HAVE to struggle in chilly, damp houses only to read that the energy companies are announcing record profits - it's greed. Pure and simple. It's about time the government stepped in and put a stop to the exploitation. Except they won't. Because privatisation was a Conservative initiative in the first place...

 

Electricity here is expensive, and the options for house heat are wood/oil burning stoves or furnaces, pellet stoves, and baseboard heaters (hideous, antiquated things that attach to the skirting board and burn leccy for fun). Central heating isn't common, and most insurance companies won't touch your property if you've got it out here (in the sticks). I like snow, and I don't mind winter so much, but I could easily live without -38c again.....

Last winter we burnt 6 cord of wood (a stack 24ft long, 4ft high and 16" wide is a cord) and about a tank of oil (200 gallons US) which came to around $2200 or 1600GBP for the winter (Nov-April).More than I would have forked out in gas and leccy back in blighty for the same period. I have friends who run baseboards only, and their monthly hydro bill is $500+ through the winter (hydro is what they call the leccy here, because most of it is from the hydro dams). Electricity companies worldwide are not shy about hiking prices that's for sure, and unfortunately the government hasn't the spine to intervene......

[pcstru]

I love the irony of :

 

Energy companies lambasting the Labour leader Ed Milliband for daring to suggest a Labour government would fix energy prices to protect consumers from rampant profiteering. How dare they distort the market!

 

Energy companies lambasting the state of negotiations to build new nuclear power stations because the government seem un-willing to fix the price of energy high enough or for long enough to guarantee them a massive return on their investment.

 

Capitalism. Don't-cha-love-it!.

[AMLinington]

I love the irony of :

 

Energy companies lambasting the Labour leader Ed Milliband for daring to suggest a Labour government would fix energy prices to protect consumers from rampant profiteering. How dare they distort the market!

 

Energy companies lambasting the state of negotiations to build new nuclear power stations because the government seem un-willing to fix the price of energy high enough or for long enough to guarantee them a massive return on their investment.

 

Capitalism. Don't-cha-love-it!.

 

LOL I'm not convinced that qualifies as irony tbh. Exploitation more-like....

 

Perhaps prices should be capped at a % of the price per barrel - might make for a more competitive market? Maybe? My understanding of energy economics is limited. It is frustrating though how much further we have to stretch our already tight bank balances. Not so much in terms of short term things, but the longer term stuff like mortgage payments, council tax, car insurance and energy bills. We are having to shave so much off by doing so many little tweaks here and there that it becomes a delicate balancing act with little to no room for contingency.

 

I'm dreading winter this year - we've nursed our dodgy boiler through 2 winters and I'm not convinced it will last much longer but we simply don't have the money to replace it - plus they won't fit it unless we do the kitchen because of code violations and stuff. So our situation is basically Rock < Us > Hard place.

[ButterflyMoon]

Totally agree @AMLightfoot it is getting harder and harder to get by. There really should be a difference between being in work and not. People should not have to struggle this much just to get through an impending winter. Before all the wear another jumper brigade jump in being warm in your home should not be a luxury but rather a basic right?

[pcstru]

TBefore all the wear another jumper brigade jump in being warm in your home should not be a luxury but rather a basic right?

I fear the only way to achieve that would be by demanding that buildings are built to very high standards of energy efficiency and many existing buildings just wouldn't ever meet that standard (my house is probably one of them - last years winter bills were around £1600 for gas+elec over the winter months). At the moment energy is too cheap - future generations will pay the cost of cleaning up our waste because we certainly aren't willing to pay the full cost. IOW how does your right to be warm stack up against their right to a habitable planet?

[DT2]

Totally agree @AMLightfoot it is getting harder and harder to get by. There really should be a difference between being in work and not. People should not have to struggle this much just to get through an impending winter. Before all the wear another jumper brigade jump in being warm in your home should not be a luxury but rather a basic right?

 

It *should* be, yes. But just think of all those folks who keep warm on your tax money having never graced a place of work in their lives. Whilst you sit and freeze, and bust a gut on a daily basis trying to make ends meet.... The first house I bought was gloriously warm, but only because the guy next door never worked a day in his life and always had the heat up full. I didn't need my heating because effectively my taxes were paying his bill anyway... God forbid these people be forced to work and not have enough money to go round, that's some kind of travesty you know

[Flatpackhamster]

I love the irony of :

 

Energy companies lambasting the Labour leader Ed Milliband for daring to suggest a Labour government would fix energy prices to protect consumers from rampant profiteering. How dare they distort the market!

 

Capitalism. Don't-cha-love-it!.

 

If it was capitalism, I would. It's a corporatist stitch up between the UK govt, the EU and big business. Capitalism is it not.

 

A better example of irony would be Ed Miliband. As climate change secretary enacted the Climate Change Act which guarantees a massively inflated price to wind and solar generation. The consequences of the guaranteed subsidies for windmills and solar are higher bills. Which is why your electricity bills doubled between 2000 and 2010 and why they'll double again between 2010 and 2020. To pay for windmills.

Now he's pledging to fix the prices he rigged.

 

Did I write 'irony'? I meant to write 'prick'.

 

Today I see the EU parliament has voted to raise the cost of prospecting for shale gas and oil, thanks to the socialists and greens pushing it through. That means more expensive electricity bills for us.

[AMLinington]

IMO, I don't think it is WRONG per se to raise the cost of prospecting for non-sustainable energy sources, as long as this is offset by a DECREASE in costs for 'Green' energy - hydroelectric power, solar, wind, tidal, etc. I am genuinely concerned about what will happen when the non-renewable energy sources run out.

 

The problem with the cost of everything going up is that wages aren't supporting it - back in the 40s and 50s (and earlier) many families could live comfortably on one income. 50+ years later and we're struggling on 2 full time incomes - in the next 20 years how many working adults will a household need just to get by?

 

We're already facing the prospect that many of us will NEVER retire and will likely die at our desks....

Edited October 10, 2013 by AMLinington

[pcstru]

We're already facing the prospect that many of us will NEVER retire and will likely die at our desks....

 

Well, at least they run the heating at work :-)!

[AMLinington]

Well, at least they run the heating at work :-)!

 

LOL Unless you work in our Support team who prefer the temperature of the office so cold it makes Siberia look like the Sahara...

[Flatpackhamster]

IMO, I don't think it is WRONG per se to raise the cost of prospecting for non-sustainable energy sources, as long as this is offset by a DECREASE in costs for 'Green' energy - hydroelectric power, solar, wind, tidal, etc. I am genuinely concerned about what will happen when the non-renewable energy sources run out.

 

You can't decrease the costs of renewables without raising the subsidy. I think it is wrong to take money out of people's pockets and shove it to the corporates.

 

The problem with the cost of everything going up is that wages aren't supporting it - back in the 40s and 50s (and earlier) many families could live comfortably on one income. 50+ years later and we're struggling on 2 full time incomes - in the next 20 years how many working adults will a household need just to get by?

 

There are several reasons for that, not the least of which is the endless ramping up of debt which taxpayers have to keep paying the interest on, and there's also house price inflation of course which is the largest single bill most people have to pay. There are solutions - none of them pleasant.

[nicholab]

I did hear that the UK has the poorest insulated homes in Europe know wonder we have such high bills.

[pcstru]

IMO, I don't think it is WRONG per se to raise the cost of prospecting for non-sustainable energy sources, as long as this is offset by a DECREASE in costs for 'Green' energy - hydroelectric power, solar, wind, tidal, etc. I am genuinely concerned about what will happen when the non-renewable energy sources run out.

I don't think there is any prospect of fossil fuels running out in the next 50-100 years. Shale gas looks highly likely to be an accessible source for a long time to come, there are huge reserves locked up in tar sands and there are possibilities of exploiting methane hydrates locked up below the waves. There is probably a huge reserve of oil yet to tap into under the relatively unexplored Artic seas. The question is, do we want our descendants to have to deal with the consequences of burning more and more fossil fuel, driving atmospheric Co2 levels ever higher and global average temperatures with it? Essentially we are pushing the cost of our energy use onto generations which have yet to be born - is that ethical? Does our "right to be warm" trump their right to live in a temperate world?

[pcstru]

I did hear that the UK has the poorest insulated homes in Europe know wonder we have such high bills.

 

True and while Germany has higher energy costs, it hit's consumers less hard because they are much more efficient in their energy use.

[Flatpackhamster]

True and while Germany has higher energy costs, it hit's consumers less hard because they are much more efficient in their energy use.

 

However, German companies are finding that they can't compete due to high energy costs. So consumers are losing out because not only do they, as employees, find their wages squeezed because their employers are spending so much on power, but they are also losing out because goods are more expensive, because companies have to raise their prices - because they're spending so much on power.

 

Insulation isn't the problem here. Ecomentalists deciding what the price of electricity should be is the problem here.

[pcstru]

However, German companies are finding that they can't compete due to high energy costs.

Can't they? I guess that means Germany isn't the economic powerhouse of Europe. Can't say I'd noticed that.

Insulation isn't the problem here. Ecomentalists deciding what the price of electricity should be is the problem here.

That seems a very strange thing to say given we are demonstrably using more energy than our European neighbours. If we use energy more efficiently, then we will use less of it. That is a good thing whatever the price.

[StevieM]

I've been with an enery company called Ebico for almost 7 years during which time they have put up their prices maybe four times. Unlike the rest of the energy companies, they are a not-for-profit organisation with the aim of providing a fair and simple tariff for everyone. Currently, gas costs 5.57p per kWh (inc VAT), regardless of how much you use or how you pay. This means no discounts for Direct Debits, but no penalties for pre-payment meters. There are also no tiers after you have used a certain amount of energy and no standing charge. You simply pay for what you use. Electricity is a little different, in that it varies slightly according to region, but other than that, the single cost per kWh applies.

 

When I bought my house last year, gas was supplied by npower on a pre-payment meter that had a 37p a day standing charge (before VAT)! That's over £11 a month (over £132 a year) before any gas is supplied. With Ebico, I have spent less than £2 on gas since May. While I appreciate that this would not work out the same for everyone, depending on how you use energy in your household, it shows that it really isn't necessary to increase energy prices every few months if you don't have big bonuses and shareholder dividends to pay!

[AMLinington]

I've been with an enery company called Ebico for almost 7 years during which time they have put up their prices maybe four times. Unlike the rest of the energy companies, they are a not-for-profit organisation with the aim of providing a fair and simple tariff for everyone. Currently, gas costs 5.57p per kWh (inc VAT), regardless of how much you use or how you pay. This means no discounts for Direct Debits, but no penalties for pre-payment meters. There are also no tiers after you have used a certain amount of energy and no standing charge. You simply pay for what you use. Electricity is a little different, in that it varies slightly according to region, but other than that, the single cost per kWh applies.

 

When I bought my house last year, gas was supplied by npower on a pre-payment meter that had a 37p a day standing charge (before VAT)! That's over £11 a month (over £132 a year) before any gas is supplied. With Ebico, I have spent less than £2 on gas since May. While I appreciate that this would not work out the same for everyone, depending on how you use energy in your household, it shows that it really isn't necessary to increase energy prices every few months if you don't have big bonuses and shareholder dividends to pay!

 

Somewhat ironically, just checked Ebico against my Southern Electric Gas and elec bills and they come out considerably more expensive than Ebico in both Gas and per unit elec prices for me... Interesting.

[unixman_again]

I don't think there is any prospect of fossil fuels running out in the next 50-100 years.

I remember reading that Britain is sitting on top of 800 years of coal. All we need is a couple of nice big coal fired power stations and we, as a nation, can have all the electrickery we want to use, and at a nice cheap price. There would be many thousands of mining jobs created too.

 

Essentially we are pushing the cost of our energy use onto generations which have yet to be born - is that ethical?

Probably not, but on the other hand I personally couldn't care less as I'll be pushing up the daisies by the time climate change or pollution becomes a real problem.