Electricity Price Ripoff

Young Sal, aka Toreador, has complained taking the point in the BBC article. Perhaps he'll let us know how he got on,

VAT, the green levy and adding the cost of the green transition to domestic bills doesn't help. 

...Indeed, that was another mistake, adding the £4bn annual costs of the green transition to customers’ bills rather than via general taxation. “Such an approach is regressive, disproportionally affecting those least able to afford it”. And despite evidence from other countries of the unintended consequences, the government decided to introduce an energy price cap. In practice that meant that when prices surged, thinly capitalised and shaky businesses were tied into contracts guaranteed to lose them money. As a result, more than 30 suppliers have gone bust, at a cost to billpayers of around £4.6bn. The UK cannot control global energy prices, but the effects of “layers of often-populist, short-term interventions” have resulted in a dysfunctional energy market that means prices are far higher than they need be. We haven’t just been unlucky: this is “market failure by design”.

Iain Conn, ex-boss of Centrica, from an article in The Times May 2022.

I think the biggest problem with energy companies going bust is the temptation to steal customers money taken by direct debit.

Bulb is an excellent example..

The company went under having a huge number of customers with massive credit balances as a result of their aggressive direct debit advance payment policy, and all of that money was spent.

There is an argument that customers of such companies should lose that money, having been stupid enough to sign up with a reckless organisation, and indeed the rioting that would have gone on had this been the case might have been useful, if only to endure the directors of said company, once torn apart alive by an angry mob, will not be able to repeat the theft.

Sadly OFGEM or whoever they are these days requires the company they force to take the customers of the bankrupt outfit accept the credit balances of the transferred customers even though the former company frittered the funds away

This is why it took so long for BULB’s customers to be handed to a new supplier, nobody had the money to take the hit from honouring those credit balances and surviving.

PART of the reason your bills are now so high is the hike in standing charges all companies are allowed to rip you off, the hike being needed to swell the dented coffers of the surviving companies forced to pay out their own funds, or actually give free electric and gas to the value of the credit balance to every transferred customer.

Had companies been forced to issue bills in arrears for energy actually used like they used to, no company would have been able to amass such huge reserves of unspent customers money as they have, and in fact fewer companies would have gone under in the way they did.

When these energy companies collapse the taxpayer ends up paying for their customers to have cheap energy, up until the time their accounts are compulsorily transferred.
I don't think it is fair. The only policy of Labour's I like the look of is their GB Energy idea which would cut out so many middle profit takers.
Labour's problem is that they think renewables are the only way forward. We need reliable as well as renewable. If we can't provide our own energy at peak times we are at the mercy of international links to keep our power on.
During these periods France, Belgium, Norway can pretty much charge what they like per MWh which increases average consumer prices. Gas is being offloaded at Isle of Grain from America (fracked) and even Angola. A third world country sends us gas to keep our power grid up. You could not make it up.

Energy prices will come down as the weather warms up, but I hope the government get serious about providing more nuclear power and stops closing down coal power stations, as they are necessary for reliable power when it is cold, cloudy and calm.

The energy business was made into a stockbroker gambling spree by Margaret Thatcher. Her New Electricity Trading Arrangements turned energy from the essential it was to the trading commodity it is today

Companies are required to bet, a year in advance, on how much power they need in each of the 48 30 minute slots in a day. Get it wrong by one erg and you pay. If you estimate too little, you must buy extra from the network middleman at a massive price hike.

If you estimate too high you must sell the extra back to the middleman for next to nothing.

Then then buy or sell extra capacity at an outrageous profit to them to whoever makes it most worth their while.

Yorkshire Electric installed equipment at Blue Circle Cement to crush rocks automatically. They offered Blue Circle almost free electricity if they let the Electricity Company control when rock was crushed

So if there was a spike in need, Blue Circle went without crushed rock do YEG would not have to pay punitive prices for extra. When there was a surplus Blue Circle drowned in rock dust

And Yorkshire electric then started to budget for power to break rocks that never got used for that as they sold it to the network for handing to idiots who screwed their estimates, and bought the cheap power when someone overs estimated and crushed rock with it

So Maggie turned a power company into a cement making company and all in the name of profiteering and speculation.

Its privatisation STUPID !!!

The French own most of my energy provider,its privatisation gone mad,like many other things you deny reality,no essential utility should be anywhere near private hands.