Electricity And Gas Bill

[david small]

I’ve just received my quarterly bill for electric and gas. It’s more than doubled. £710 plus £180 so called fuel assistance. So £890. Average for this time of year was £350. WHY? Where the extra £500 is going to come from I have yet to decide. I fear for those that do not have, and cannot get this resource. What a terrible shower of incompetent wastrels run this once great country.

[Barsel]

Lottie I knew someone who got rid of her cooker and only used the microwave for cooking. It might have been one of those that comes with an oven or a grill or whatever it is they come with.

[barry1010]

Barsel, it should be on the label near the plug and in the manual.

[MissTerious2]

I used to have one with a grill but never used it. We now have a small microwave. Actually it's main use is to warm hotpads for my back!

[Barsel]

Barry, my small SC is 130-160w and my bigger one is 240-290w

[pastafreak]

Last year when rearranging my kitchen, I put the microwave in the only available space... on the counter just in front of the boiler. Last week when I had the boiler serviced, I squeezed the microwave into a large closet in the kitchen. It's a relief not to see the damn thing taking up so much space. I only ever use it to reheat on rare occasions.

[barry1010]

Barsel, what sort of hob have you got? Dig the manual out and check the wattage if it's electric
If it's gas it might be cheaper to make a soup on the hob than in the slow cooker. You'd need to work out the timings for both methods and calculate the costs.

[ladybirder]

NJ my thoughts exactly regarding your last paragraph. Of course it can't be disregarded depending on where it happens.

[Buenchico]

The typical price of 1 kWh of electricity about a year ago was around 15p. The shortage of gas to generate electricity, largely due to the war in Ukraine, has pushed up the wholesale price of gas enormously. (At one point is was six times what it had been a years earlier, although the price has fallen back somewhat since then).

Ofgem caps the price that energy suppliers can charge for electricity. However, because wholesale prices rose so unexpectedly, many energy suppliers ended up making a loss on selling electricity, which is why around 40 of them went bust.

The current maximum price that a customer will pay for electricity is 34p per kWh which, as you say, is more than double what it was a year ago. However 34p per kWh isn't the maximum price that energy suppliers can actually charge (and, indeed, what they all need to charge just to stay in business). That figure, set by Ofgem, is 67p per kWh. So although customers only pay 34p for each kilowatt-hour, the goverment has to pay the remaining 33p.

The government support is going to reduce in the forthcoming financial year, meaning that bills will probably rise by about 20% from their current levels next year.

There are currently no plans for government support to continue in the following financial year though. So, unless wholesale prices fall dramatically, we'll all be paying at least 67p per kWh in two years time. That means that our bills in two year's time will be roughly DOUBLE what we're currently paying.

[bednobs]

^^^ deep joy!