No standing charge electricity suppliers

[PeterW]

Does anyone know off hand of a list of electricity suppliers that don't charge a standing charge ..?

 

eon have fitted the meter today but it's costing me more in standing charges than usage and I want to swap asap ...

[AliG]

If you put your usage into uswitch.com it will tell you who would be cheapest over the year taking both the standing charge and the unit cost into account.

 

If you do change supplier you can sign up to Quidco or one of the other cash back websites. They usually give a fixed amount for a supplier change, say £30 cash back. This can be a very generous percentage if you have a modest bill.

Edited January 27, 2017 by AliG

[jamiehamy]

I'm on Ebico for the house just now - iirc it's 16p/kwh and no standing charge. It's run and managed by SSE and suits us perfectly for the build. I think we have a tenner DD setup which is far more than we need.

 

 

[PeterW]

Thanks - may well end up as Ebico as soon as the mpan is registered into the supply system.  

[ProDave]

Yes I'm with ebico as well.  I've used 64KWh so far in 2 years building the house and for this low usage, a no standing charge tariff is perfect.  Will switch to something else when we eventually move in.
 

[Jeremy Harris]

I recently went through this exercise to see whether we could save anything, given our low electricity usage, as the standing charge was the major part of each bill.  I have to say that it's very, very frustrating, as the price comparison sites don't have all the tariffs on, and even when they do I found the tariff information was often wrong.  All told I spent a very frustrating few hours putting together a spreadsheet, listing all the suppliers that seemed reasonable and then getting tariff data directly from their own website (not easy, as some suppliers do their best to hide the standing charge!).

 

Anyway, I learned three things:

 

1. - price comparison websites are generally pretty useless if your electricity usage is low, and they don't list all the available tariffs anyway, only those the suppliers pay them to.

2. - The market is extremely volatile, with tariff schemes changing very quickly, I suspect this is to deliberately cause confusion with consumers.

3. - If a supplier advertises a tariff it doesn't mean that will actually offer it.  I selected a supplier with a low standing charge and an acceptable unit charge, called them and they denied the tariff existed.  I had to point them to their own web page and get the chap on the phone to go on the internet, rather than their internal system, to prove this.

 

In the end we agreed a tariff with a supplier this way.  It's not listed on their website, has no fixed term, but they agreed on a breakdown of standing charge and unit charge that was the best for us, and that's what we've gone with.

 

I know I'll probably have to do this again within a year or so, because they are bound to change the tariff, but I have at least got a bit of experience of dealing with them now.

 

BTW, for our original site supply there was only one no-standing charge supplier, Ebico, and the unit charge was so high that we wouldn't have saved anything in the first year, even though our usage wasn't great.  Worth checking, as charges vary a fair bit from region to region.

Edited January 28, 2017 by JSHarris

[PeterW]

Ebico is 21p a unit which seems high however with eon the standing charge is 26p per day unless you do a monthly DD and the minimum they would accept is £25..!

 

I can't see us using anywhere close to that so as soon as the MPAN is on the system I will change it. 

[ProDave]

3 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Ebico is 21p a unit which seems high however with eon the standing charge is 26p per day unless you do a monthly DD and the minimum they would accept is £25..!

 

I can't see us using anywhere close to that so as soon as the MPAN is on the system I will change it.

I'm paying 18.1p with ebico, but up here in the far north we are hit with an extra 2p per unit transmission cost whichever supplier you use (something the SNP have failed to address though they keep talking about it)  so I would expect most people to be getting about 16p per unit from ebico.

 

they also do a no standing charge off peak tariff. You were not looking at that one, that will have a higher daytime rate?
 

[Jeremy Harris]

I managed to get a tariff from SSE where the standing charge is £0.148/day and the unit charge is £0.1404/kWh, which for us hits the "sweet spot".  Ebico were around 20% more expensive, mainly because of the high standing charge.

 

I was also surprised at how much electricity we used in the first 6 months, when it was just a site, with the house frame going up and first fix going on.  I think a fair bit of that was from power tools, portable lights etc.  It was winter, and we quite often had one or two 400W halogen lights on outside, one on almost all the time in the garage, that was being used as a site workshop, and one outside the house when things like the cladding were going on.

[ProDave]

Surprising at your build usage.

 

We have used 64KWh building the house so far. That's electric cement mixers, then all the usual electric power tools. I have a couple of flourescent lights for temporary work lights inside the house rather than halogen spotlights.  I am surprised how little we have actually used so far.  I tend not to work much after dark.
 

[Jeremy Harris]

6 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Surprising at your build usage.

 

We have used 64KWh building the house so far. That's electric cement mixers, then all the usual electric power tools. I have a couple of flourescent lights for temporary work lights inside the house rather than halogen spotlights.  I am surprised how little we have actually used so far.  I tend not to work much after dark.
 

 

It surprised me, too, but then there were some big loads on for long periods.  I reckon we had a 400W halogen on in the garage running every working day for around 2 months, and I ran the borehole pump (around 700W) for about two weeks, 24/7, when I was cleaning it out (or trying to).    That means I used around 235 kWh just trying to initially clear the borehole, plus around 384 kWh just for the garage halogen, and there was an outside one that was used on dull days, too.

 

I ended up investing in a fluorescent work light (I already had the halogens) when we had the house airtight and were doing the plastering, as it was impossible to use the halogens indoors, they just made the house far too hot, even in January.  Most of the usage in our first six months probably came from just the borehole pump and the garage work light, I'm sure.

[joe90]

I went with green energy for no standing charge, I can't remember what I pay but I think it's 1p per unit above normal. Also have to say they have been very helpful , always answer the phone and frankly ( as I now know they do a economy 7 tariff) will stay with them.

[PeterW]

@joe90 have you got a link ..?

[joe90]

http://www.greenenergyuk.com/

 

[Jeremy Harris]

18 minutes ago, joe90 said:

I went with green energy for no standing charge, I can't remember what I pay but I think it's 1p per unit above normal. Also have to say they have been very helpful , always answer the phone and frankly ( as I now know they do a economy 7 tariff) will stay with them.

 

 

It varies with location though, I found.  For example, the zero standing charge Green Energy tariff for us is £0.1662/kWh, which is 18% higher than our current tariff, and that 18% difference was just enough to offset the standing charge we pay.  They were the second cheapest tariff for us, though, when I checked.

[joe90]

I didn't know location made a difference!!!, perhaps I will look at the market when the house is complete. Also, I have been looking at floodlights as my halogens get through loads of lamps, do they do LED Conversions?

[Jeremy Harris]

1 minute ago, joe90 said:

I didn't know location made a difference!!!, perhaps I will look at the market when the house is complete. Also, I have been looking at floodlights as my halogens get through loads of lamps, do they do LED Conversions?

 

 

Location is the killer, as you literally have to check every single supplier against your specific location in order to make a fair comparison; you cannot trust the price comparison sites at all, I found.  In my case I'd have ended up paying about 20% more if I'd followed their advice.

 

You can get LED work lights, but the ones I looked at were very expensive (admittedly I was in a hurry to buy a couple, as I had two plasterers working in tee shirts and short in a house that was around 30 deg C inside!).  I've never seen a conversion kit, but you can buy cheap LED external floodlights quite cheaply, and SOME of them are pretty good.  It would be pretty easy to fit one to an old halogen work light frame.  They are a real mixed bag, though, with no easy way to tell how bright they are from the supposed rated power.  I bought some 240V 20W ones that were very good, and around a tenner each, IIRC, then when I went back and bought two more the same they were rubbish, about half the light output.

 

As usual, Big Clive has some stuff on them on his "let's tear apart Chinese junk and see how rubbish it is" YouTube channel : https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom

Be aware that you can waste hours there, though, as he does some serious destructive testing of stuff there, and reveals just how bloody dangerous a fair bit of stuff being sold on a well-known auction site can be.

[Steptoe]

2 hours ago, joe90 said:

I didn't know location made a difference!!!, perhaps I will look at the market when the house is complete. Also, I have been looking at floodlights as my halogens get through loads of lamps, do they do LED Conversions?

You can get cfl replacements for halogen lamps,

Always go by the lumen output, not the wattage, and go for cool or daylight white, much better colour aspect, and brighter for a given wattage, 

I'd go for 2 or 3 20w LEDs rather than a single 50, you're able to spread the light better that way. 

I changed a 500w halogen in my back yard to 2x 20w halogen cool white and have more light than I did previously.

[Grosey]

On 1/27/2017 at 22:18, PeterW said:

Does anyone know off hand of a list of electricity suppliers that don't charge a standing charge ..?

 

eon have fitted the meter today but it's costing me more in standing charges than usage and I want to swap asap ...

 

I have eon fitting my electric meter on a Thursday, had the same thoughts regarding standing charges but just figured it was something I'd have to swallow. Is there any penalties for leaving eon within about 2 days of them paying for the meter installation?

[PeterW]

Meter install is free. You pay the DNO for the connection and that's the cost (£1200 for 2m..!!)

 

Reading the Eon email there is no minimum contract so I wouldn't worry and find a lower charging supplier. 

[ProDave]

Ebico don't do new installs, so what I had to do was get SSE to do the install and fit the meter, then immediately swap suppliers to ebico. I think I paid about 4 days of standing charge to SSE while the switch happened.