Ofgem - What's the point?

This was always going to happen. I don't think there should be any drama around it. When gas was 3p per unit most people were not that interested in how their bills played out. Including me. When gas went to 16.7p per unit and we needed Gov intervention at 10.5p to protect us then a lot of people started noticing their consumption rate and habits.
Before the troubles I used 530 mcubed of gas a year which is 6000kWh ( still lower than the low use average of 8000)
Since the troubles I learned all the efficiency measures I could on the boiler and put them in place. Also looked at consumption cutting. Now in the last 12 months I used 375mcubed of gas which was 4275kWh so an overall saving of 29%
which may as well be split half to efficiency and half to conscious cut backs.
 
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Boro_Interlinked said:
This was always going to happen. I don't think their should be any drama around it. When gas was 3p per unit most people were not that interested in how their bills played out. Including me. When gas went to 16.7p per unit and we needed Gov intervention at 10.5p to protect us then a lot of people started noticing their consumption rate and habits.
Before the troubles I used 530 mcubed of gas a year which is 6000kWh ( still lower than the low use average of 8000)
Since the troubles I learned all the efficiency measures I could on the boiler and put them in place. Also looked at consumption cutting. Now in the last 12 months I used 375mcubed of gas which was 4275kWh so an overall saving of 29%
which may as well be split half to efficiency and half to conscious cut backs.
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For the past year or so "typical use" has been rammed down peoples throats, with many people wrongly assuming that it was a limit on what they can be charged.

Most people do not understand their energy bill and revising "typical use" in this way can lead people do believe they can now afford to use more energy.

By doing this, Ofgem are misleading people into believing energy prices have come down more than they have.
 
Standard government practice to manipulate figures to make them sound better.

The whole price cap term isn't fit for purpose anyway and already used to make it sound better than it is. The only thing that matters is the unit cost.
 
Well I'd say average use metric has to move with what's actually playing out. Since price cap came in 2019 they looked at the 2 or 3 years prior to that to get estimated average use as a start point. Even the first year after covid, ofgem were aware of more working from home which means more gas use and were in fact thinking about increasing the original units estimates. But the energy crisis came along faster than the need to do that and price caps moved to 3 months values BUT monetary projections didn't , they still stuck to a year which I thought was daft since everbody had no clue what value the next 3 months would actually be at let alone the 3 after that and the following 3. Plus the whole reason for the PC was you couldn't be hit hard by your provider for not knowing about how to change deals and get fixed in prices, and then a situation arose where there were NO new fixed prices at all to lock into, the whole comparison market collapsed as there was only 1 available , the Standard variable tarriff.
ML is not having a go at Ofgem or BBC he is just pointing out something small to be aware of. Otherwise the whole price cap is going to have to go forward stating it was based off typical original use units in 2017,2018 and doesn't care what is actually really being used as of the current time frame.
 
Boro_Interlinked said:
Well I'd say average use metric has to move with what's actually playing out. Since price cap came in 2019 they looked at the 2 or 3 years prior to that to get estimated average use as a start point. Even the first year after covid, ofgem were aware of more working from home which means more gas use and were in fact thinking about increasing the original units estimates. But the energy crisis came along faster than the need to do that and price caps moved to 3 months values BUT monetary projections didn't , they still stuck to a year which I thought was daft since everbody had no clue what value the next 3 months would actually be at let alone the 3 after that and the following 3. Plus the whole reason for the PC was you couldn't be hit hard by your provider for not knowing about how to change deals and get fixed in prices, and then a situation arose where there were NO new fixed prices at all to lock into, the whole comparison market collapsed as there was only 1 available , the Standard variable tarriff.
ML is not having a go at Ofgem or BBC he is just pointing out something small to be aware of. Otherwise the whole price cap is going to have to go forward stating it was based off typical original use units in 2017,2018 and doesn't care what is actually really being used as of the current time frame.
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Buy typical use is meaningless because everyone's house is different. There is no typical use. There is a typical use for a 3 bed house with 2 adults and 2 kids but that wouldn't be the same if the house was a new build or an old, poorly insulated house and it wouldn't be the same if it was just a single person living there or 3 adults or people working from home or people working away etc. There are so many variables to just that single size of house nevermind all the other different sized houses and makeup of households that typical use is a nonsense term.

They should be making the terms used to define a bill more understandable (kWh usage, unit price, standing charge).
 
Nano said:
Buy typical use is meaningless because everyone's house is different. There is no typical use. There is a typical use for a 3 bed house with 2 adults and 2 kids but that wouldn't be the same if the house was a new build or an old, poorly insulated house and it wouldn't be the same if it was just a single person living there or 3 adults or people working from home or people working away etc. There are so many variables to just that single size of house nevermind all the other different sized houses and makeup of households that typical use is a nonsense term.

They should be making the terms used to define a bill more understandable (kWh usage, unit price, standing charge).
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Most people don't know there are 3 typical use tiers. Low consumption 1-2 people small flat is the lower one. The price comparison websites, ML, the whole energy sector has decided to hone in on the mid tier (without pointing out the other 2) to demonstrate possible savings. The higher tier (detached 4 plus people 5 bedrooms etc ) is never talked about but the values are there for anyone to lookup.
It's true to say that perhaps everything should have just stayed at unit values, but someone thought that a lot of households would prefer a yearly monetary amount to compare and visualise savings.
However back to the OP's point, I finally found an article (FORBES) detailing what is to come using the new dropped estimate use values and the mid-tier drop in leccy is just 7% use and the gas is just 4.2% use. I don't think these are big enough to warrant thinking they will mislead households to use a lot more energy.
 
Chris_Boro said:
Energy prices shot up like a rocket only to tediously drift slowly back down (until the next crisis), now Ofgem are helping with the illusion of falling prices by lowering how they define typical use.

Get in the bin.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1674796443343912961
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There will be a number of reasons for this, which is fair enough I think.

More poeple using Solar, that the grid don't even know about, and I bet they also exclude those with EV's etc (which is fair to do).

The whole of the new development where I live has solar panels, and the grid doesn't even know they're there (or didn't) and there's no feed in tariff available etc. Each house only has 4 panels each, but that's enough to run my house when it's sunny and I WFH. A lot of sunny days I end up putting about 4-10kWh back into the grid (for free), as do my other 30 neighbours, and that juice will go straight into the estate next to us, and the grid are completely unware.

People will have cut use down too, I keep telling our lass to stop using the dryer (when each room is 20 degrees and there's a big shining sun blasting an empty washing line, and I have been a lot more conscious about leaving lights on all over the place.

Same with better insulation, turning radiators down etc, it all really adds up.

Same about different tariffs, loads have gone on smart tariffs and keep a better eye on their consumption, or aim to reduce it.

The "average bill" term they use is completely backwards though, this doesn't really mean anything to anyone. They should just list what rates actually are, what they were and what they will be etc. Even if they just said 50% higher than 2019 etc, going to 20% higher than 2019 etc. It needs a recognisable base/ reference point and before covid and the war etc is probably the best comparison.

Ofgem, the grid and the government need to do a hell of a lot more to make more people aware of smart tariffs and get people educated, peoples bills and the grid could be managed far better if people knew when the peak times were. Many people can halve their bills now, and don't even know it. Loads of people are unaware they're paying rates way above the cap, getting knocked down back to the cap, and the taxpayer picking up the bill for the ignorance of it.
 
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