I went to an electricity prices comparison website to find out if there were more competitive rates and how much I was likely to save per year. I found it very difficult to do a real comparison myself because it is done for you and there are no real figures detailing how much per unit you will have to pay.
Another friend who went through the same process recently discovered that the supposing saving with a new provider was in fact nearly the same as his current supplier, even though they were claiming to be much cheaper. So you do need clear information to be able to know exactly what you are expected to pay.
Once you reach the page for electricity prices comparison, you have to fill in the details of your current supplier. They ask you to put in the amount of money you have spent on the electricity over the past year or how much in Kwhs you have used. As I receive a very strange bill which only shows the last 3 months of usage and that was the summer when we use much less electricity, it was very difficult to work out how much was an realistic number to put in. So I had to make a near guess and then the programme estimates the projected cost over the year and the savings you will make compared with your current supplier.
The problem is that they offer different packages for different services and at this stage on the electricity prices comparison website there is no way of finding out how much you will actually pay per unit for your electricity.
However there were some offers of 2.5% lower than the standard rate of other providers to be fixed for about a year. After that the rate would revert to standard variable rate similar to a the way a fixed rate mortgage work. So that at least should be a good saving over the year.
Wholesale prices have been extremely volatile over the past few years and although current wholesale prices are not as high as they were, the problem is that forward annual wholesale prices (anticipated future prices) for electricity and gas are currently around ten percent to twenty percent respectively higher for the year starting April 2010 than for the year starting October 2009.
At least twenty years ago my ‘then husband’ expressed the view that we should be charged a great deal more for our fuel because he believed that if fuel prices were more expensive it would force people to be more economical with our resources. I agree with him to a degree and so it is proving that now costs have doubled people are seriously looking at alternative sources of power. The problem is that because we have been spoiled with cheap fuel for many years, now we are all moaning about fuel being very expensive, and so websites offering electricity prices comparison are thriving. Is this the right way to move forwards though, or are energy companies offering electricity prices comparison just cashing in and jumping on the bandwagon? You decide, and make your choices with your new energy provder carefully, think about solar power for example.
