British gas 12.5% electricity price rise

DorsetDude

DorsetDude

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Centrica chief executive Iain Conn "We are selling electricity at a loss and that is not sustainable."

Strange that every year their profits are generally of the order of half a billion pounds. Poor old sods struggling to make ends meet arent they.

Oh and has anyone noticed the price of their gas bill drop since the wholesale price of gas dropped in 2105? No? Strange that.

Hang on to your hats as all the others leap on the bandwagon.

Detest energy companies more than the banks I think.
 
The wholesale commodity price as an element of the electricity is approximately 50%. The remainder is costs that the government have applied, and are increasing considerably. All these "green" initiatives are not being paid for by the companies, it's you and me. So whilst the cost of electricity in the market is falling, it is not the only component, and its share is getting smaller.

As for the gas, there are less government add ons. But this is more inported, so Brexit is indeed a real factor in increasing costs.

As for the profit,ok carefully and you'll see the profit for supply of electricity and gas only makes a minor portion of it. At last look, approx 5%. You can't knock a company for making that kind of return on the sums of capital they have to use! Supermarkets and banks earn more.

I'm not an employer of BG and I also pay for electricity and gas. I too don't like price increases, but understand where they derive from. Shop around, there are plenty of alternative suppliers (smaller ones don't have as much costs on them as the larger suppliers), so for 15min work, you could save a considerable sum.
 
Transmission costs and government levies according to someone they interviewed on the radio this morning. Apparently BG are the last of the big six to put electricity prices up.

There definitely is a problem for consumers with government schemes that the energy suppliers have to fund, e.g. the feed in tariff for renewables, as the cost of that is passed on to the consumer.
 
I did a go compare a few months ago and there wasn't as much in it as when I switched over a year ago.
market is getting tighter again and the cost of renewables is high but it is the way forward.
 
They've increased their `service plans` too, by a similar %
 
The thing that seems to come up with energy is the question as to whether it would be better nationalised. The thing is whiles the shareholders do take their 8%, or whatever, shareholders demand private companies be run efficiency and ethically. Would this be the case if it was nationally run as it wouldn't be allowed to fail and if it wasn't run efficiently well then the additional cost wouldn't be put on utility bills but would be sneaked into taxes.

The other thing being back in the 80s when times were good we had a big pot of gas off the coast in the continental shelf which was cheap so we molested the S**t out of it for low cost. Now we are subject to international energy markets. Example you can have an LNG tanker that has come from north africa and can get within 2 miles of the UK coast, gets a call saying wholesale prices in Japan are double that in Europe so the ship tootles off to Japan.

I don't think that nationalisation will take us back to being anything like the good times of the 80s that many think it will.
 
Just look at how inefficiently nationalised industry was run. If you think your bills are high ow, then be prepared if (God forbid) we enter that phase.

A depleted gas source, lack of investment and a growing economy (albeit at a lower rate than before) are all profound inputs.

We need to be more energy efficient, that is what will make a change in costs.
 
I certainly agree with @Meeten here. We as a country are still wasting huge amounts of energy.
I still despair walking through places like Leeds with the wife on an evening after some beers and a pizza and seeing endless office blocks lit up like Christmas trees.
 
Meeten said:
Just look at how inefficiently nationalised industry was run. If you think your bills are high ow, then be prepared if (God forbid) we enter that phase.

A depleted gas source, lack of investment and a growing economy (albeit at a lower rate than before) are all profound inputs.

We need to be more energy efficient, that is what will make a change in costs.
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Thats what a regulated industry can do. Can be forced to address demand side as well as supply side. If you can incentivise demand to meet supply then you have just a base load and no need to demand / supply side balancing.
 
jamesev said:
Thats what a regulated industry can do. Can be forced to address demand side as well as supply side. If you can incentivise demand to meet supply then you have just a base load and no need to demand / supply side balancing.
Click to expand...
There is already demand incentives in place (demand side response). But with the best will in the world there is no way that you can make demand baseload.

Further development on storage, in the form of batteries will allow the smoothing of supply. This is what I believe further development has to go to. In fact the likes of Tesla are producing residential batteries, and work at the gigafactory will I'm sure enhance the current offering.

I doubt v much that nationalisation will bring this level of product development!
 
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