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Post by gordo on Jul 9, 2023 14:08:32 GMT
Over 700 000 folks who could have gotten the Govt. Cost of Living payments towards fuel, have in fact missed out. £300 million has gone unspent out of a £360 million fund set up by Government towards the scheme, which was supposed to help folks living Off Grid, such as in barges or river boats, and others such as those living in park homes, farms, and the likes. For many of these ppl, the application system has been a bit of a nightmare. from BBC News............... www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66124201
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Post by philbadfactor on Jul 13, 2023 9:03:40 GMT
I got an email from Outfox yesterday saying they are increasing my DD to £144 pm from £112 pm. The reason is that they say they have underestimated my energy use. Considering I live alone in a 1 bed property does this seem right ? Before prices went up I was paying £54 pm ! What do others here pay for Energy just out of curiosity ?
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Post by terminator on Jul 14, 2023 9:30:29 GMT
Just take two bills, one from July 2022 and the July 2023, and subtract the highest from the lowest and that will give you an estimate of how much electric and gas you're using in a 12 month period. Then use the present SC and kWh prices to work out a rough estimate of what the next 12 months usage will be. For example 1000kWh of electric at 29p and 5000 kWh of gas at 7.5p will be £290 for electric and the SC at 55p would be £590.75 in total, the gas would be £375 and the SC would bring the total gas usage up to £475.26 that would be a combined total of £1066.01 which would give a monthly DD of £88.84.
I was with Outfox for 11 months and my original DD was £39 per month but they increased it to £51 per month when I notified them of my meter having two readings due to the free electric period I was on from BG my total usage on the second reading over the time between them supplying the electric and me notifying them of the second reading was just £11 over 6 months. When I notified them they deleted all the bills they had sent me from their site and put in the new bills, luckily I downloaded the bills each month so I had a copy of them until my desktop HDD went in October 2022.
I'm now with Octopus on their Tracker tariff and pay roughly 18p per day for electric and 3.8p for gas with an SC of 48.29p per day for electric and 26.84p for gas. Have Outfox still got the no new customers embargo on them or has it being lifted? I believe the owner were due to appear in court on some charges but I forget what they were!
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Post by philbadfactor on Jul 15, 2023 12:17:53 GMT
There's something wrong here then somewhere. If my maths are correct you are paying less than £1 a day all in. whereas I'm paying roughly £4.73 a day according to Outfox estimate ? Can i possibly be using that much more gas and electric ? I have had the gas fire on a lot this winter but my electricity use can't have changed much. Anyway thanks for that info. I will investigate a bit more.
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Post by terminator on Jul 15, 2023 16:08:32 GMT
There's something wrong here then somewhere. If my maths are correct you are paying less than £1 a day all in. whereas I'm paying roughly £4.73 a day according to Outfox estimate ? Can i possibly be using that much more gas and electric ? I have had the gas fire on a lot this winter but my electricity use can't have changed much. Anyway thanks for that info. I will investigate a bit more. In winter the gas usage should be minimal. I have my boiler set to 40 degrees for water running through the radiators and the thermostat set at 16 degrees. In summer my usage is about 2.5 kWh per week. Many boilers allow you to adjust the water temperatures for both the water through the taps and radiators so I adjusted the temperatures to those for heating and 40 degrees for the hot tap water as it's far too hot set at 60 degrees plus. My daily usage on the tracker tariff price wise is just over £1.20 per day as most days my usage is around 4 kWh. Today the price was 11.09p and I reckon it will cost me about £1. I keep daily readings of my usage as I have smart meters, SMETS 1, and they are read by the supplier. I would keep a spreadsheet of the usage, if a lot of gas is used in Summer then as I would turn down the temperatures on the boiler as that can greatly reduce the gas usage, as I said in Summer my gas usage is about 2.5 kWh, one fifth of a unit on the gas meter. I even take the red numerals when reading the gas meter as one unit is roughly 11.3 kWh so in summer I sometimes don't use a unit of gas between readings. If you can afford it get a smart plugs, they can be well under £10, TAPPO and leave it attached to an appliance for 24 hours to see how much electric is being used by the appliance then move it to another appliance and do the same, my biggest use is the freezer using about £8 per month whereas the kettle uses about half that. I have 13 smart plugs on almost all of my appliances except the washer, fridge and shower but since I've gone too the tracker tariff the kWh price has being left at the April price as I cannot be bothered to change it every day.
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Post by philbadfactor on Jul 17, 2023 9:44:11 GMT
Cheers for all that terminator, there's a lot for me to get into there. I don't do any of that or pay much attention at all to it but now I've got to. My rads don't ever get used because my system won't switch from hot water to heating properly so I've been putting off getting an engineer in to fix it and this looks like it's been a major false economy as it means I've been using just an old, probably inefficient gas fire for heating. I think thats where the £££ is getting burned up.
My habit is to put the hot water on constant till it shuts the boiler off which can be about an hour as i have the hot water on maximum heat. As you say too hot. I do this to run a bath a coupla times a week and have a bit of warmish water in the taps.
I think what I'll do is get a new thermostat for the rads as the one I have is in the hallway and i don't even use it and it might not work anyway if I remember. And put a new one in the living room and just heat that room. Also don't think I've got taps on the radiators so can't shut down the others and just have one accepting hot water. I couldn't care less about the hallway kitchen bathrrom and bedroom frankly. I might also get the gas fire taken out as I have an electric inset fire somewhere which I could plug in on a low setting just to have a small local heat source as well to sit by with an albeit artificial flame. This is more a psychological thing to do with comfort.
Anyway thanks again, much appreciated.
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Post by philbadfactor on Aug 31, 2023 9:42:42 GMT
It turns out I'm on Fox Duel Fuel Variable. Elec; 29.6p per Kwh Gas; 7.13p per Kwh SC E; 38.1p/day SC G; 29.1p/day I will do some sums re annual usage soon to see how I'm paying so much. The only thing I can think of that's changed from the last year or two is I bought a secondhand 65 inch screen which I keep on standby and use quite a bit for internet and TV. I wonder if that's drawing a lot more electric than I realised.
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Post by terminator on Aug 31, 2023 11:21:24 GMT
It turns out I'm on Fox Duel Fuel Variable. Elec; 29.6p per Kwh Gas; 7.13p per Kwh SC E; 38.1p/day SC G; 29.1p/day I will do some sums re annual usage soon to see how I'm paying so much. The only thing I can think of that's changed from the last year or two is I bought a secondhand 65 inch screen which I keep on standby and use quite a bit for internet and TV. I wonder if that's drawing a lot more electric than I realised. I turn everything off at the wall socket if its not in use, even on standby it can use a lot more power than you think, especially if it's connected to the internet as it has to keep the connection live 24/7. My electric bill reduced by 33% when I turned everything off at the wall socket, only turning them on when needed, before I did this my monthly electric usage was 220 kWh plus it's now down to 145 kWh per month or 155 kWh depending on my usage. If I don't use the PC's or games consoles then it can drop to as low as 70 kWh per month, which was what it was in 2019 when I spent 6 weeks in hospital.
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Post by philbadfactor on Sept 23, 2023 7:39:58 GMT
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Post by gordo on Sept 23, 2023 20:22:58 GMT
Standing charges for electric seemed to double last year, and as you note, they have hardly come down, and in some cases, going up. The price rises are unjustifiable. We had a report from Govt. the other day telling us about 4,000 ppl died of the extreme heat in England and Wales, mainly hotter parts of England I'd guess, but that many more ppl die each year thru cold weather. The Govt, doesn't seem as half much concerned about that, tho! Here we have a report from ITV News, and it gives us a shocking figure of some 200,000 having died of cold since 1988. About 7,000 are reported to have died during the extreme cold spell of 2010-11, tho that year's figure is not given in this particular ITV report. Yet this very day, UK Govt disbands its Home Insulation group! from ITV News............. www.itv.com/news/2023-09-22/heat-related-deaths-in-england-and-wales-hit-record-high-in-2022from BBC News................. ( Insulation Group Disbanded) www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66900999
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Post by philbadfactor on Oct 13, 2023 14:32:17 GMT
Induction Hobs. Anyone use them/have any experience of them. They are supposed to be cheaper to run. But you have to make sure you've got a magnetic based set of pans.
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Post by terminator on Oct 14, 2023 11:04:42 GMT
Most modern pans can be used on an induction hob, all you have to do is look at the type of cooker a pan works on to see if it's compatible with an induction hob. To test if it will work with an induction hob just use a magnet and if it sticks to the pan then it should work on an induction hob. I have a one plate induction hob, I've used it since late 2016 and it is cheaper than using a cooker that hasn't got an induction hob, I bought this model it cost me £44 at the time but it's now £85, there are cheaper models available. Double plate versions are available for £84 which is what I will be buying when this one breaks. I boiled some potato's on it today and it cost me 6p for 30 minutes an a low setting
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Post by philbadfactor on Oct 14, 2023 11:40:40 GMT
Cheers for that info I thought you would have one. There's one being sold on OLIO not far from me. A double for £50. I might offer £40 for it. It's a Princess, about £140 on Amazon. new condition.
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Post by philbadfactor on Oct 16, 2023 10:35:31 GMT
Talking about keeping a room at a certain temperature. In my living room where I spend most of my time I can feel cold when my digital temp. and humidity meter is reading 22c for example. But I look at it now and it's reading 18c but because I've just come in from shopping it doesn't feel too bad. I have no heating on at all at the moment. The moral of the story is keep moving to get blood flow going a bit. Though I admit from a cold standing start that's not so easy.
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Post by gordo on Oct 23, 2023 17:58:01 GMT
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