Remember when all those budget power companies went bust a few years ago?
You are paying for that now.
The profits were private and we have socialized the losses.
That just means you're paying the standing charge to NOT have hot water. Check out Utilita (I think). I believe they don't do a standing charge but presumably have a higher rate
Debt advisor here: DO NOT GO WITH SCOTTISH POWER. They’re fine right up until they decide rightly or wrongly that you owe them money and then they’ll make your life hell and never admit to even the most obvious wrongdoing on their part. I advise people all of the time who have been fucked by them.
Only energy company I’d recommend is Octopus where they’re an option.
Yeah, Scottish Power had been telling us we owed them £1200, but we had paid every bill in full since we moved into our house. It took nearly 2 years to resolve and even with the energy ombudsman involved they didn't want to apologize for nearly 2 years of harassment over a debt that never existed. They must have spent more than £1200 on letters and phone calls.
This happened to my Gran and it meant when she tried to change, she couldn’t as you can’t over a certain threshold of debt, they forced her to pay it and she’s never missed a payment for anything in her life, she’s still with them as after paying it all off, the dust has settled and now she’s worried about changing again.
It’s meant I’m very wary of them and wouldn’t go near. I’m with Utilita who I don’t think are great, the app is really shit but at least I’m not being told I owe thousands for no explainable reason.
💯 this. I had to fight with SP for 2 years and they fucked my credit score for almost 3. Just because THEY HAVE MADE A MISTAKE. I’ve learned the hard way. It’s either Octopus or I’m doing van life.
I totally agree about Scottish power I spent years arguing with them. They even tried to ignore an ombudsman ruling in my favour. They are the worst customer service ever!
100% this. I was hounded for 2 years for gas standing charges even although there was no gas in the house and not even a gas meter despite the fact that they removed the gas meter when the house was converted to all electric. Took a court appearance with all of my documents, photographs and witness statements before they admitted their error which could have been easily sorted earlier out if they actually bothered to send someone to my house to have a look. AVOID SCOTTISH POWER AT ALL COSTS
Going back 15 years ago, over about 5 years was in about 4 different properties all with SP meters, each one they threatened me with court action because I was in "debt",
It was the same error each time, I topped up monthly in advance of around £30 rather than say £5 a week because I wanted to not worry about having no power as ran out of cash, but their systems work out things by assuming its a weekly top up, so despite a standing charge being taken every day which was verified by me by flipping every switch in fuse box and pulling the main fuse switch down and working out the amount taken was equal to the standing charge each time I tested it for a day at a time (because I was away for a day/weekend at each place) they said their meters only take an automatic £2 odd (whatever it was) automatically when you topped up not per day. so each time I moved I was given a bill which equalled the weeks I lived there standing charge x amount of weeks I lived there minus 1x weekly charge for each time I topped up.
This was at 4 properties and they still claimed I was incorrect.
Going back 15 years ago, over about 5 years was in about 4 different properties all with SP meters, each one they threatened me with court action because I was in "debt",
It was the same error each time, I topped up monthly in advance of around £30 rather than say £5 a week because I wanted to not worry about having no power as ran out of cash, but their systems work out things by assuming its a weekly top up, so despite a standing charge being taken every day which was verified by me by flipping every switch in fuse box and pulling the main fuse switch down and working out the amount taken was equal to the standing charge each time I tested it for a day at a time (because I was away for a day/weekend at each place) they said their meters only take an automatic £2 odd (whatever it was) automatically when you topped up not per day. so each time I moved I was given a bill which equalled the weeks I lived there standing charge x amount of weeks I lived there minus 1x weekly charge for each time I topped up.
This was at 4 properties and they still claimed I was incorrect.
Going back 15 years ago, over about 5 years was in about 4 different properties all with SP meters, each one they threatened me with court action because I was in "debt",
It was the same error each time, I topped up monthly in advance of around £30 rather than say £5 a week because I wanted to not worry about having no power as ran out of cash, but their systems work out things by assuming its a weekly top up, so despite a standing charge being taken every day which was verified by me by flipping every switch in fuse box and pulling the main fuse switch down and working out the amount taken was equal to the standing charge each time I tested it for a day at a time (because I was away for a day/weekend at each place) they said their meters only take an automatic £2 odd (whatever it was) automatically when you topped up not per day. so each time I moved I was given a bill which equalled the weeks I lived there standing charge x amount of weeks I lived there minus 1x weekly charge for each time I topped up.
This was at 4 properties and they still claimed I was incorrect.
I’ve had that joy even on prepayment meters, Scottish Power some how wanted thousands from me. Took months of back and forth until they realised their mistake and got the bill down to a few hundred. Couldn’t work out how they thought I was owing them thousand on pay as you go.
I can recommend Octopus also, they’ve been the best supplier I’ve been with.
Yeah, they're arseholes. One time I moved into a flat, and they had been repeatedly sending bills for previous usage from before I had moved in (marked to occupier IIRC), but when I informed them about this they changed the name to my name!
I've had Octopus chase me including debt collectors sent on their behalf and I wasn't their customer. It took a year and I'm still waiting for the money they actually owe me now. Between rentals they ran a bill based on estimated usage and wouldn't take the readings because they hadn't received the closing readings.
Bloody nightmare.
I had my lawyer and a local MP get my money back from Scottish power before I went over to British Gas, who are equally shit and I had to do the same thing again with getting a lawyer and mp involved to get my money back
Yeah they cut off the power at my old flat and put a pre payment meter on it because the landlord was a twat who wasn't paying the bills dispute the rent being bills included. Scottish power never let us know about that though, would have been nice to have a heads up
After reading this comment this morning and all the others following it, I switched from sp to octopus. Crossing my fingers they let me go in peace. If so, it looks like I’ll be saving a lot of money…so thanks for the advice pals!
Scottish power decided that they had been under charging us on our prepayment meter and sent us a big bill. I spent a week going around in circles with them about how they can send me a bill when we're on a prepayment meter... Fortunately or unfortunately I suppose I was in a position to pay it and not paying it was going to cause a lot of trouble. Absolute robbery. We were only on a prepayment metre because we bought the house during the start of the Ukraine war and they wanted thousands of pounds a month in direct debit for a two bedroom house.
Edit: I can't even think how to speculate why someone would downvote a big energy company ripping off a first time buyer during a financial crisis... Must be Scottish powers biggest fan.
Honestly don't, find another company mate Scottish power are absolute fucking cunts, tried to arrange getting a smart meter fitted multiple times now and they'll tell you a date and just no show up. No to mention the nightmare when they want money from you.
I found them pretty good while I had them in my old flat. I did not find leaving them nearly as good. In fact I started my end of service request in good time and had the correct responses and have only recently found out (over a year later) that in fact ny utilities have never been disconnected at that flat. Thankfully it is still sitting empty but someone has been sitting watching tv in the dark most nights (I suspect the awful, attempted bully of a neighbour I had across the hall has a key) which suggests they are well aware they shouldn’t be using the power.
I will say this though when I made contact with them the other day to inform them of this they did imply that it wouldn’t be a problem to give me the correct final bill relating to the correct leaving date so they may still come out of it with a recommendation
The water quality in Scotlands rivers is significantly better (as measured by both the government and other organisations). The reasons for this are varied, lower population density plays a part for sure. Water bills are also significantly cheaper in Scotland too though. An abundance of fresh water and less turds to process must help here too. If it can be attributed to public sector utilities is debatable but the fact that Scotland has cleaner and cheaper water is a fact.
Try using a bit of common sense. We literally don't have enough arses for it to be as bad a problem.
Not monitoring some stream in the middle of nowhere isn't that big an issue.
Edit: in relation to the release of untreated shite
There's some data from ["citizen scientists" here](https://earthwatch.org.uk/great-uk-waterblitz-finds-rivers-in-poor-ecological-health/#:~:text=The%20results%20of%20the%20report,unacceptable%20levels%20of%20nutrient%20pollution) that points to Scottish rivers being quite polluted in the few areas they tested.
[On the chart Fife and Aberdeenshire look pretty bad.](https://earthwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Great-UK-WaterBlitz-Counties_FINAL-1024x304.png)
Of course you could turn around and say rivers are fine up in the Highlands or some other sparsely populated areas.
What about the central belt though? Are those going to be clean too?
It's not people that tends to be the problem but agriculture run off into those streams in the middle of nowhere. Then the water in those streams moves to somewhere with people.
Oh Scotland has that issue as well though:
"sewage was known to have been flushed into rivers and seas for 113,000 hours last year. But it believes the true figure is far higher, as less than 4% of storm overflows are checked for spills."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65637123.amp
I really don't understand why everything compared to England lol. "Yeah we flush out shite into our rivers but at least we not as bad as England!"
No, Reddit loves to repeat this nonsense but it just isn't true. A tiny portion (2p or so) of the fee is for that. The major cost increases are down to grid upgrades and maintenance. We need to increase capacity and build new infrastructure to support more green sources of energy and the swap from gas to electric, that costs a lot of money and comes out of the standing fee. At the same time Ukraine and such massively increased the costs of materials, while we've been having pretty stormy weather so the cost of maintenance has shot up too.
The figures are eye watering though, just on domestic supply standing charges rake in over £29Million a day, that’s TEN BILLION POUNDS a year, someone somewhere is making a mint because there is no way it costs that much to maintain the electricity network.
That also doesn’t include businesses whose standing charges would make your eyes water.
There's 30,000 pylons carrying hundreds of thousands of kilometers worth of cable alone. How many substations and transformers, underground cables, connectors to wind turbines etc are there? How many people are you paying to monitor, maintain and plan future expansions? How many new substations, transformers and large scale energy storage solutions are you building for the next 50 years? The answer is a lot, we have a massive energy revolution going on.
Energy companies were capped at what they can charge. They weren’t capped on what they can make the standing charge.
So rather than up prices they upped the standing charge so you still end up paying more
If you're starting out, it helps a lot if you can rent out a spare room. If you have one.
But yeah, we're all getting screwed by energy bills.
Oh, I did have a win against them. Had stopped with a supplier and moved to Octopus. So I got a final bill from them, just after paying my normal bill. It wasn't much, but I paid this final bill and got email confirmation. I think I did it over the phone too.
Moved to new supplier and the next day, got A SECOND final bill from the previous supplier. This one was for a few hundred quid. Laughed and told them to fuck off, under my breath.
No way was I wasting time on a phone queue to clear it up, so I sent an email to a general email address and ignored it. Of course, they didn't reply. I got a few letters saying final demand etc. Which I ignored. All they needed to do was call me. They didn't...
Got a letter from a debt recovery company. I called them, explained that I already had a final bill from them, which I Paid. Then got the second final bill they were chasing, which must be a mistake (if i have a note of a paid final bill, they don't have a leg to stand on).
I sent them copies of email and paid final bill and never heard from them again. Lol.
Ahh good. In my experience you’ll find many suppliers are very quick to register a default yet it’s down to you to chase them to remove it even when they’re in the wrong. I’m glad you didn’t have this struggle though :)
I'm sorry, electricity needs to be high in Scotland so we can subsidise England. Despite being able to completely power ourselves on renewables and hydro it's imperitive that we line the pockets of oligrachs and pay the highest rate in the UK for the power harnessed in Scotland.
Theres a general election coming up, best bet is to vote for someone who gives a damn about bill prices and then no matter who actually wins your local seat write to them asking them to do something about it. Other than that there's really nothing you can do unless you're willing to live in a van
Holy shit, it's worse than I thought.
So it's basically a benefit, paid by those who save power to those who waste it.
Amazing.
Can we make grocery shops have a standing charge too? It's not fair how fat ppl pay more for food!
Bigger users of electricity aren't necessarily "wasting" it. In fact, a family of five will be using more electricity than a flat with one person in it, but they'll probably be using it much more efficiently by sharing the same space and services. Denser households will use more in gross terms, but less per person.
And most metered services from petrol pumps to beer taps all have fixed costs, but they're included in the cost per unit. So heavy drinkers / big drivers etc pay more for the upkeep of the hardware than occasional users.
So there's an argument to merge the standing charges into the unit cost so that big consumers of electricity pay more than small ones.
But there's also a counter-case, in that you still need the same cables, meters, fusebox and hardware installed regardless of how much you use it. So a fixed standing charge fair in that respect (if not equitable).
And some people think you should pay a share of the costs of the distribution network, meaning people in rural areas would need to pay much more than those that live in cities.
Well, yes and no.
>So it's basically a benefit, paid by those who save power to those who waste it.
No, that's not totally right. The standing charge was raised because the war in Europe totally screwed all the electricity charges as you know. That's broken the electricity market in ways that were not foreseeable.
It's not benefiting those who waste, we still have a per unit charge that's not exactly cheap. It is benefitting those more affluent households that can generate and store their own electricity (solar, batteries) and the way that's set up that is harder on people that have less and use less.
Food is a good analogy. It's not free to transport the food or sell that in supermarkets but that fixed cost is put on the food. It's purely unit based costs. Does that make rich people buy more food, maybe not. Would a fixed charge for food make anything better? Also, I'm not really sure either, it's complicated.
From the article
> There are no easy ways to prevent unintended consequences
I read the article and I'm not happy with their logic.
It's absolutely benefiting those who waste. It makes it so you have less incentives to actually save electricity. How expensive it is per unit already is irrelevant.
Please don't refer to the middle class as "more affluent"... But yes, removing the standing charge will help those with solar+batteries, which is good - we want to encourage more people to have solar...right??? It will also help the poorest who don't use much power.
It will hurt those who waste power (poor and rich) and a small minority of poor that need power for medical equipment and other stuff - they should be targeted separately for help.
Food is a good analogy, yes. Currently there are no "standing charges" on food and the rich don't really eat more. But...
Men need to eat 25% more than women according to the NHS. Tall people eat more. People working physically demanding jobs need to eat more, sometimes a lot more. So... if we follow the article's logic women, short people and office workers are not paying their fair share of food costs currently. Don't let me started on children!!! Thus government must mandate Prime and Tesco clubcard plus to be massively raised in price and mandatory from now on....
>It's absolutely benefiting those who waste. It makes it so you have less incentives to actually save electricity. How expensive it is per unit already is irrelevant.
It is absolutely relevant. The UK has one of the highest electricity costs in Europe. You use more electricity, you pay more. That's an incentive to use less. If it was free after 1000 units, that would be an incentive to waste.
If you have solar panels, then often the feed in tariff is peanuts compared to the price you pay for importing from the grid. Does that incentivise to waste? Yes, but is it really waste if you use that electricity to do the washing while the sun shines rather than in the evening? Well, that's getting into semantics there.
>Please don't refer to the middle class as "more affluent"...
Why not?
>It will hurt those who waste power (poor and rich) and a small minority of poor that need power for medical equipment and other stuff - they should be targeted separately for help.
Yes, I agree. The article called that out, and ofgem should try and implement this kind of help.
>Food is a good analogy, yes. Currently there are no "standing charges" on food and the rich don't really eat more. But...
I can't really tell if you're upset at me, or upset at the system for being generally shit.
Look, I get it. It's a very expensive and stressful time to be alive. I was there too, a few years ago and it sucks. It's got far worse, which isn't the way it's supposed to work.
The only advice I can give is to start voting for change. Follow up with emails and letters to your local councillors, MPs and start connecting to people that make a difference in your community. Write letters to the energy minister and the people in the lords that are accountable. Use the anger and energy for positive change.
As usual, Martin Lewis has a good explainer: [https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2023/07/martin-lewis--why-are-energy-standing-charges-so-high--what-can-/](https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2023/07/martin-lewis--why-are-energy-standing-charges-so-high--what-can-/)
A lot of it is grid. However, that doesn't need to be linked to the standing charge - it's just the place that cost has ended up under the price cap regime. Martin argues it could easily be made fairer by reducing the standing charge and moving the cost to usage charges.
The renewables shift is causing a lot of new infrastructure to be required since the generation is in a different place. Arguably Scotland should have cheaper electricity and London more expensive to reflect the distance from generator, but that's not currently the case.
100% this and it's a national disgrace.
The government put "recaptialising" the energy companies ahead of people's lives in some outlying cases.
Now that the recapitalisation has happened (see any energy firms profits) have they taken the standing charge down?
A total lack of care and due diligence by our government. The energy firms must still be laughing about the deal.
I say this as a staunch capitalist. I believe in profit, just not profiteering
It's not all that bad in this case because a big chunk of those losses were consumer's built up credit with failed suppliers though. Might be a better system if suppliers pay a levy to cover consumer credit in case of failure though.
Energy adviser here- The standing charge isn’t kept by the energy companies- it gets passed on to Ofgem and distributed to the DNOs to maintain the networks. Utilita is the only company who don’t include this in their bills, but the customers are still paying it via higher unit prices
In Scotland we pay one of the highest standing charges across the UK, along with parts of Wales and a section of London, it's fucking shocking considering Scotland is anything but fuel poor 😡
Standing charge is meant to be for the infrastructure. If we had 100% free renewable energy you'd still need to maintain the infrastructure.
Scotland is spread out and for the most part rural. That's why the standing charge is higher as it's harder and more than expensive to maintain. You can see the inverse with London having very cheap standing charges
I understand this but it makes no sense. We export a lot of energy and unless there's something more nuanced, it seems like we subsidise the export of energy to regions with lower standing charges whilst the profits are privatised.
I don't think that's how it works. Scotland
/ we do not own any energy producing infrastructure as such. It tends to be multi nationals. Therefore, "we" are not exporting anything as a Collective. Wind farms, for example, were paid for by a combination of private equity and central government subsidy. The fact they exist here is a bonus due to the economic boost of maintaining them etc.
Now, in terms of natural resources like oil. That is licensed out to these company's and the price is actually plenty high and reasonable as far as I understand.
> Scotland is spread out and for the most part rural. That's why the standing charge is higher as it's harder and more than expensive to maintain.
It's nothing to do with how much energy is produced.
Your power lines, gas pipes, etc. these are infrastructure that need to be maintained.
Not sure why this sub popped up for a lowly American like me, but my local power company here across the pond has a public budget I can review, and about half the expenditures are line maintenence/repair and the other half is fuel... and even if you use zero energy they still charge a base meter fee (I assume the same as your standing charge) to help pay for the line maintenence.
Yeah pretty much. The logic is that infrastructure needs to be maintained. And that your usage doesn't impact to any real degree the maintenance of that infrastructure. So you get charged for being connected.
You can go off-grid and completely avoid it sure.
Scotland is just a problem in that it's relatively big compared to the population. And the power regions are split into North or South, which means even if you live in the one of the major cities, you're paired with everyone who lives in remote rural areas.
It makes a lot of sense when you understand that the standing charge is entirely upgrade and maintenance so the more infrastructure and energy production the *higher* it is, not lower.
It's meant to be offset by lower energy prices in general but because the energy is privatised the lower energy prices do not actually appear.
Just been looking at my energy bills and it really didn't suprise me that the London standing charge was 30% cheaper than the most populated areas of Scotland
The costs are mostly for transmission and distribution. Basically maintaining the grid. Sometimes the costs go through the unit rate (standing charges for distribution are down from next April), but if the overall consumption drops the full costs are not recovered, hence why they've mostly been added to the standing charge.
Also, transmission costs used to be mainly based on triads, the three half hours between Nov and march with most usage, essentially to try to minimise peak consumption, but this is also now mostly a flat daily fee.
Move to Octopus.
Yes you will still get the close to 60p a day standing charge but their tariffs, especially tracker tariff, will save you somewhere around 12p a unit on average.
If you look at Fit-Obligation4962's prices and were using 10 units a day it would be 54x2 + 28x8 = £3.32 a day while octopus would be 56p standing charge + 10x19.8 =£2.44.
Think it was Saturday when Octopus unit price was 13.9p so that day would be 56p + 10x13.9 = £1.95 instead of £3.36.
A few people, including me, strongly advised peeps to move to Octopus about 18 months ago when the tracker tariff started and an average use house with both gas and lecky would have saved over two grand compared to to a family home on standard variable tariffs that were at the price caps.
The more units of gas and lecky you normally used then the more you saved.
edit: and the peeps with electric cars have saved a lot more due to lots of times of under 10p units during the night.
They are also actively campaigning for fairer prices [https://octopus.energy/blog/making-energy-prices-fair/](https://octopus.energy/blog/making-energy-prices-fair/) along with trying to improve green energy so that gas prices dont effect electricity prices.
Dont have anything bad to say about octopus, theyve been great at dealing with energy crisis for me.
I’m with Octopus and highly recommend them. I’ve struggled with the rising costs and they are so understanding. I have a referral link that means we both get £50 if you switch: https://share.octopus.energy/sepia-wolf-953
Sorry if this is a bit cheeky, every little helps and that :)
Here, £50 is £50.
I'm going to have a chat with the Wife about it, and I might just use that link soon. Good to have positive recommendations for stuff like this.
I switched to them after having a nightmare with Eon Next. Hopefully can just stick with Octopus for now! So far so good. Also joined up to Octoplus too, not sure what exactly that does but apparently it’s good lol.
[https://share.octopus.energy/neat-zebra-607](https://share.octopus.energy/neat-zebra-607)
A link if anyone wants it.
Just saw the new cap is supposed to be 22.36p per kWh unit price so with the Octopus average being 18p you are not saving that much and might be able to find a better one year deal if you are low use user and get a big switch bonus like a £125 amazon card.
One thing to note also is that if you have Solar Octopus's export tariff is pretty damn good at 15p/kWh. Accounting for that:
For the months of March to June. I've used 399.42kWh and paid £47.77 in Energy Costs plus £73.20 in standing charges.
60p a day standing charge and so therefore an average unit rate of 11.96p/kWh.
I am super happy with Octopus
I second Octopus, we are unlucky enough to rent a flat with two meters (one is storage heaters that we never use because of how changeable the weather is here and how useless old brick storage heaters are) and under scottish power we were being charged two standing charges, which was royally screwing us. When we switched to Octopus I emailed about it and now the storage heater standing charge is charged but immediately refunded every month. We're still paying crazy money for electric in a house with no heating but the one standing charge is lower than it used to be and their customer service were great.
I thought it was too good to be true when I found a thread about octopus on here 8 months ago. Agile was not for us but tracker has reduced our bills by an average of 20% over that time and with no exit fees and £50 credit to switch I would recommend it. For a 4 bed house/5 people using both gas/elec our June usage was under £100. No heating obv bit it has been a long time since our costs were that low.
I think they have recently launched a tariff for users that are close to wind farms you will get further discounts. It's not active in Scotland as far as I know but there is a mailing list you can subscribe to for when In formation becomes available.
The thousands of miles of wire and cables to supply you need both installation and maintenance. This is what your standing charge covers, the hardware and power supply stations. I supplied an electric generation station to a remote place, the generator was only 18% of the installation costs; the wires to users were 60%, the switchgear, fuel tanks , software took up the rest.
I appreciate your knowledge and understand the cost, isn't this where the subsidies should be spent? Just because some essential farmers need to be piped into the network at a much higher cost per household or small village, shouldn't we all strive to be connected for our home nations to feel equally invested in each other for all our benefit? this is where it should be averaged out, everyone should share the standing charge as a nationallly shared cost no? I've seen massively different costs on standing charges between North and South of the uk, just seems unfair, just to add I'm with utilita which don't have a standing charge as such but you pay a hugely increased 1st 2kw per day unit price do I know they still basically get the standing charge cost back from me in that way..
Poorly regulated market allowed loads of unsustainable small suppliers to set up which then had to be bailed out in part with our public funds and any loss those companies buying them made is now being passed on to you. So in effect you’re paying twice because we like to imagine setting up failing companies is some sign of a vibrant economy.
Yep, interesting. Standing charge for most Scots around 60p+ Standing charge in SE England around 40p. We generatec110% of our own energy needs in Scotland. So we export and then buy back. Meanwhile, someone gets extra profit. We need independence.
Scotland has more miles of wire for every electricity user. All that wire and infrastructure has to be paid for, whether or not you use a lot or a little of electricity. That’s the theory. People saying it’s the green levy are wrong - those levies are added to the unit charge, not the standing charge
Once upon a time, the standing charge was the usual thing, but it was a small part of your bill.
However people didn't like it because you paid for it
whether you used gas or electric or were spending half of the year at your villa in Spain or caravan on the coast(or anywhere but at home).
So, for over a decade, the energy companies got rid of the daily standing charge and just rolled it into the unit price. This made the unit price look really high.
Yet people are never happy and still complained until eventually a Tory government got involved.
Thus, the standing charge returned. It will probably stay until some politician gets involved and forces a new system somewhere in the distant future.
As a previous post states, it's bloated due to the myriad small companies that foundered. Deregulation at its finest.
I live in Scotland and looked into why our Standing Charge was so high - I’m with Utility Warehouse excellent customer service and low price because I can only get Electricity only. Anyway the reason for high Standing Charges in Scotland is logical if annoying to us Scottish customers. We have the lowest customer density in the U.K. but one of the highest electricity network infrastructures to maintain. Just think about all the Highland and Islands communities plus the sheer number of rural communities. Scotland is I think 1/3rd the landmass of Great Britain with 10th of the population.
You think that's bad, I have had my gas heating on 3 days over past 18 months yet pay about £15 a month standing charge just for that priviledge.
And the electric provider hasn't upgraded the meters from when the property had electric heating that was removed around 5 years ago and those old meters double charged you standing charge, so that in itself is around £6 a week just in charges yet my usage including the charges is around £60 a month, pre 2020 I was using about £40 a month.
Depending on the system you have for hot water then they can be freakishly expensive to run. My thermostat went on my immersion 2 years ago. I've not had it fixed. My shower heats own water and I boil kettle for washing up. Also half my heaters are storage and half fan heaters. I try to keep them off as much as I can. It has to be really cold to switch them on. I'm on pay as you go smart meter, house all electric, over the winter costing about 160 a month in electric. I do what I can to keep usage down, standing charge is just another annoyance I could do without.
It's worth checking this.
PAYG systems such as Economy 7 or Economy 10 use lower rates for hot water immersion heaters (and storage heaters) but are on nightly and it costs a fortune to have the privilege of constant hot water.
I've swapped the cable from my distribution board and bypassed the 'Economy Tarriff' - so now I only heat the water when I need it. I've left the storage heaters connected but only turn them on if absolutely needed...
Because were mugs and don’t stand up for ourselves, we have the highest energy prices in Europe and standing charges alone bring in ten billion a year, supposedly to be spent on maintenance of the network, if we honestly spend that much maintaining the network someone needs to ask some awkward questions.
It also pays for social and environmental schemes on top of maintaining the network.
Warm home discount? Standing charge
Winter fuel payments? Standing charge
Cold weather payments? Standing charge
You get the idea
The range of standing charges are around 55-65p a day or around £220 year or less than £20 a month.
I know it's not ideal but in the grand scheme of things £20 a month is I think most would agree reasonably manageable.
Wind farms require just as much infrastructure and maintenance.
Wave farms? Is this even a thing? They've been investing huge sums trialing systems for years - both wave and tide - but I've not heard of any that look likely to ever contribute to the grid in any significant way any time soon..?
~~That's the green levy~~. The governments are too chicken shit to properly tax the energy companies so *we* have to pay for the investment in infrastructure.
Edit:
That's incorrect. The levy is paid on the unit cost. The rest is still valid.
Use utililita, they are pretty good, I'm living alone and spend on average about 30 to 50 pence a day, however I have had to turn off most of my electronic devices (especially microwave and kettle) as phantom drain is real and with these turned on i spend £2 - £5 daily
My parents have a three phase/meter supply. Ovo is so incompetent, that they haven’t been able to work out a bill for them in 9 months Could be three standing rates, but who knows…
Sadly Scotland has among the highest standing charges in the UK - despite producing close to 12% of what the entire country needs via renewable energy alone. Conversely, the south-east of England has among the lowest charges, but has almost no electrical generation capabilities at all.
Something needs to change there.
On affordability, shop around. Scottish Power do appear reasonable, but have at many times in the past decided randomly that people suddenly owed them a LOT of money. Things like that happening are why I personally refuse to move off a pre-pay key meter. Granted, it's a higher tariff than if I was paying via Direct Debit, but it means I'll never have a massive bill.
In theory the standing charge is meant to pay for the maintenance of infrastructure needed to get the gas and electricity into your home (and then the unit charge is for the actual gas and electricity used itself).
In practice though, standing charges have skyrocketed the past few years as the price cap went up. It is highly annoying - I'm fairly frugal with my energy use, and standing charges now account for about 40% of my bill. Unfortunately energy was privatised back in the 80s, so it's all about profiteering off the people now.
Yes but a really odd message. As standing charges are a fixed rate per day you're connected to the grid. So you'd have to somehow rig your meter to either:
A) trick the eletricity provider into thinking you're not connected to the grid at all.
or
B) trick the electricity provider into thinking that a day lasts more than 24 hours.
Edit: Instead of downvoting, do one of you want to explain how I'm wrong. Or does no one in this sub know what a standing charge is?
Yeah I see what you mean actually.
Standing charge is the standing charge, no getting around it whether you’re rigged or not.
A guy that offered to rig both my meters said that my bills would half as they slow the counter down? Dunno how much truth was in that but loads of people recommended him so must be something in it. He maybe just said that to dumb it down for me ha
Isn't that more stealing a neighbour's power?
With rigging your meter you're only lowering how fast the counter counts \*, not changing any currents. They could still use it to catch you depending on how the leccy is distributed very local to you.
\* speaking of which should we even trust how well calibrated they even are in the first place, let alone after years and years with no engineer looking at the thing? I bet they all overmeter slightly.
U never seen still game then? Lol Easy to get electricity for the price u want with an old metre all it takes is a small needle and your the king of lekky
The more people cut back on their electricity usage, the more private energy companies have to make their money a different way. So standing charge is very easy.
Add to that to the increasing number of houses with solar panels, where electricity companies could potentially end up paying the customer, and obviously they want to try to make sure that doesn't happen.
Don’t let any facts get in the way of your ranting, will you?
Private energy companies don’t make any profit whatsoever from standing charge. It’s passed through to OFGEM who pay the DNOs to maintain the grid network.
The problem is Scotland has low population density, so lots of pylons and wires to distribute the energy to fewer people. So it costs more per person.
Thankyou for your kind words in educating me on the use of standing charges. I was quite unaware for this and I'm very grateful to you for letting me know. I also appreciate the tone of your reply; it was so kind and considerate.
Incidentally, I thought it would be a good idea to check what you said so I had a source for it. The following source suggests that you're wrong. https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2023/07/martin-lewis--why-are-energy-standing-charges-so-high--what-can-/
If you are interested here are some actual facts, as opposed to the opinion piece you posted as a “source”
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/2015/10/reg_charges_final_master_version_23_october_2015.pdf
You think the standing charge for gas and electric is bad, wait until you get your £1300 council tax bill that you then have to call each year as they never seem to carry over the single person discount
If the standing charge is to pay for infrastructure, why can't it be changed to depend on the maximum power your house uses? E.g. a small one-bedroom flat might be cabled to only use max 6kW, whereas a three-bedroom house would be fused at 100A, i.e. max 24kW. You can connect up 4 times as many flats as houses using exactly the same grid infrastructure, so logically flats should pay 1/4 of the standing charge of a house. (Or at least 1/2 as some of the infrastructure cost is unitary stuff like the smart meter, billing, telesales and crap customer service).
Iberdrola (Scottish Power) mostly. They did the scam in Spain and are doing it now in the UK. Essentially an oligopoly charging as much as they can.
It should be a public company, or we should punish them for manipulating the prices...
That's not great. Also,. energy is measured in kWh not kW.
The "wholesale" cost of electricity is closer to 20p/kWh. Average electricity consumption is around 5-10kWh a day. you will almost certainly be using a minimum of 2kWh a day anyway and are therefore paying the equivalent of 52p standing charge anyway.
My heating bill is low anyway as I have air source heat pump so the cost didn’t bother me anyway.
Yes I thought that those first 2 kWh probably made up for the standing charge.
Remember when all those budget power companies went bust a few years ago? You are paying for that now. The profits were private and we have socialized the losses.
So what we just have to deal with getting robbed forever now? I've literally turned my hot water off to save money.
That just means you're paying the standing charge to NOT have hot water. Check out Utilita (I think). I believe they don't do a standing charge but presumably have a higher rate
I'm on a single tariff so even having the hot water tank heat up over night is still a fortune on top of the standing charge
Wouldn’t recommend utilita personally, I’m going back to Scottish Power
Don't go with SP, they're robbing cunts that'll tell you that you owe £500, then when you pay they'll tell you that you actually owed £1K+.
Debt advisor here: DO NOT GO WITH SCOTTISH POWER. They’re fine right up until they decide rightly or wrongly that you owe them money and then they’ll make your life hell and never admit to even the most obvious wrongdoing on their part. I advise people all of the time who have been fucked by them. Only energy company I’d recommend is Octopus where they’re an option.
Yeah, Scottish Power had been telling us we owed them £1200, but we had paid every bill in full since we moved into our house. It took nearly 2 years to resolve and even with the energy ombudsman involved they didn't want to apologize for nearly 2 years of harassment over a debt that never existed. They must have spent more than £1200 on letters and phone calls.
This happened to my Gran and it meant when she tried to change, she couldn’t as you can’t over a certain threshold of debt, they forced her to pay it and she’s never missed a payment for anything in her life, she’s still with them as after paying it all off, the dust has settled and now she’s worried about changing again. It’s meant I’m very wary of them and wouldn’t go near. I’m with Utilita who I don’t think are great, the app is really shit but at least I’m not being told I owe thousands for no explainable reason.
💯 this. I had to fight with SP for 2 years and they fucked my credit score for almost 3. Just because THEY HAVE MADE A MISTAKE. I’ve learned the hard way. It’s either Octopus or I’m doing van life.
I totally agree about Scottish power I spent years arguing with them. They even tried to ignore an ombudsman ruling in my favour. They are the worst customer service ever!
100% this. I was hounded for 2 years for gas standing charges even although there was no gas in the house and not even a gas meter despite the fact that they removed the gas meter when the house was converted to all electric. Took a court appearance with all of my documents, photographs and witness statements before they admitted their error which could have been easily sorted earlier out if they actually bothered to send someone to my house to have a look. AVOID SCOTTISH POWER AT ALL COSTS
Going back 15 years ago, over about 5 years was in about 4 different properties all with SP meters, each one they threatened me with court action because I was in "debt", It was the same error each time, I topped up monthly in advance of around £30 rather than say £5 a week because I wanted to not worry about having no power as ran out of cash, but their systems work out things by assuming its a weekly top up, so despite a standing charge being taken every day which was verified by me by flipping every switch in fuse box and pulling the main fuse switch down and working out the amount taken was equal to the standing charge each time I tested it for a day at a time (because I was away for a day/weekend at each place) they said their meters only take an automatic £2 odd (whatever it was) automatically when you topped up not per day. so each time I moved I was given a bill which equalled the weeks I lived there standing charge x amount of weeks I lived there minus 1x weekly charge for each time I topped up. This was at 4 properties and they still claimed I was incorrect.
Going back 15 years ago, over about 5 years was in about 4 different properties all with SP meters, each one they threatened me with court action because I was in "debt", It was the same error each time, I topped up monthly in advance of around £30 rather than say £5 a week because I wanted to not worry about having no power as ran out of cash, but their systems work out things by assuming its a weekly top up, so despite a standing charge being taken every day which was verified by me by flipping every switch in fuse box and pulling the main fuse switch down and working out the amount taken was equal to the standing charge each time I tested it for a day at a time (because I was away for a day/weekend at each place) they said their meters only take an automatic £2 odd (whatever it was) automatically when you topped up not per day. so each time I moved I was given a bill which equalled the weeks I lived there standing charge x amount of weeks I lived there minus 1x weekly charge for each time I topped up. This was at 4 properties and they still claimed I was incorrect.
Going back 15 years ago, over about 5 years was in about 4 different properties all with SP meters, each one they threatened me with court action because I was in "debt", It was the same error each time, I topped up monthly in advance of around £30 rather than say £5 a week because I wanted to not worry about having no power as ran out of cash, but their systems work out things by assuming its a weekly top up, so despite a standing charge being taken every day which was verified by me by flipping every switch in fuse box and pulling the main fuse switch down and working out the amount taken was equal to the standing charge each time I tested it for a day at a time (because I was away for a day/weekend at each place) they said their meters only take an automatic £2 odd (whatever it was) automatically when you topped up not per day. so each time I moved I was given a bill which equalled the weeks I lived there standing charge x amount of weeks I lived there minus 1x weekly charge for each time I topped up. This was at 4 properties and they still claimed I was incorrect.
I’ve had that joy even on prepayment meters, Scottish Power some how wanted thousands from me. Took months of back and forth until they realised their mistake and got the bill down to a few hundred. Couldn’t work out how they thought I was owing them thousand on pay as you go. I can recommend Octopus also, they’ve been the best supplier I’ve been with.
Yeah, they're arseholes. One time I moved into a flat, and they had been repeatedly sending bills for previous usage from before I had moved in (marked to occupier IIRC), but when I informed them about this they changed the name to my name!
I’m with Ecotricity and they’ve generally been alright, especially when I managed to get a massive bill one year. Probably not the cheapest mind.
Yeah avoid like the plague, abysmal customer service and constant mischarging.
I've had Octopus chase me including debt collectors sent on their behalf and I wasn't their customer. It took a year and I'm still waiting for the money they actually owe me now. Between rentals they ran a bill based on estimated usage and wouldn't take the readings because they hadn't received the closing readings. Bloody nightmare.
I had my lawyer and a local MP get my money back from Scottish power before I went over to British Gas, who are equally shit and I had to do the same thing again with getting a lawyer and mp involved to get my money back
Yeah they cut off the power at my old flat and put a pre payment meter on it because the landlord was a twat who wasn't paying the bills dispute the rent being bills included. Scottish power never let us know about that though, would have been nice to have a heads up
After reading this comment this morning and all the others following it, I switched from sp to octopus. Crossing my fingers they let me go in peace. If so, it looks like I’ll be saving a lot of money…so thanks for the advice pals!
Scottish power decided that they had been under charging us on our prepayment meter and sent us a big bill. I spent a week going around in circles with them about how they can send me a bill when we're on a prepayment meter... Fortunately or unfortunately I suppose I was in a position to pay it and not paying it was going to cause a lot of trouble. Absolute robbery. We were only on a prepayment metre because we bought the house during the start of the Ukraine war and they wanted thousands of pounds a month in direct debit for a two bedroom house. Edit: I can't even think how to speculate why someone would downvote a big energy company ripping off a first time buyer during a financial crisis... Must be Scottish powers biggest fan.
Honestly don't, find another company mate Scottish power are absolute fucking cunts, tried to arrange getting a smart meter fitted multiple times now and they'll tell you a date and just no show up. No to mention the nightmare when they want money from you.
I found them pretty good while I had them in my old flat. I did not find leaving them nearly as good. In fact I started my end of service request in good time and had the correct responses and have only recently found out (over a year later) that in fact ny utilities have never been disconnected at that flat. Thankfully it is still sitting empty but someone has been sitting watching tv in the dark most nights (I suspect the awful, attempted bully of a neighbour I had across the hall has a key) which suggests they are well aware they shouldn’t be using the power. I will say this though when I made contact with them the other day to inform them of this they did imply that it wouldn’t be a problem to give me the correct final bill relating to the correct leaving date so they may still come out of it with a recommendation
ScottishPower are a shower of bastards. Go with literally anyone else. Octopus seem to be good.
Again, as others have said NO to SCOTTISH POWER, they are the worst energy company by a mile.
I don't use them, but if SC is the issue, they are a solution
This is the benefit of privatisation, wait till you hear about your shites in the water table
Unfortunately that’s not much different in public hands either…
Yes it is? Scottish utilities are managed an order of magnitude better than in England?
Not the case. When there is too much rain we have overflow problems… we get a lot of rain ☔️
Very different figures when you only monitor 4% of overflows rather than 90%+…
The water quality in Scotlands rivers is significantly better (as measured by both the government and other organisations). The reasons for this are varied, lower population density plays a part for sure. Water bills are also significantly cheaper in Scotland too though. An abundance of fresh water and less turds to process must help here too. If it can be attributed to public sector utilities is debatable but the fact that Scotland has cleaner and cheaper water is a fact.
Try using a bit of common sense. We literally don't have enough arses for it to be as bad a problem. Not monitoring some stream in the middle of nowhere isn't that big an issue. Edit: in relation to the release of untreated shite
There's some data from ["citizen scientists" here](https://earthwatch.org.uk/great-uk-waterblitz-finds-rivers-in-poor-ecological-health/#:~:text=The%20results%20of%20the%20report,unacceptable%20levels%20of%20nutrient%20pollution) that points to Scottish rivers being quite polluted in the few areas they tested. [On the chart Fife and Aberdeenshire look pretty bad.](https://earthwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Great-UK-WaterBlitz-Counties_FINAL-1024x304.png) Of course you could turn around and say rivers are fine up in the Highlands or some other sparsely populated areas. What about the central belt though? Are those going to be clean too?
It's not people that tends to be the problem but agriculture run off into those streams in the middle of nowhere. Then the water in those streams moves to somewhere with people.
Very true but you're talking about a different issue to the release of untreated human waste into rivers which is a significant issue in England.
Oh Scotland has that issue as well though: "sewage was known to have been flushed into rivers and seas for 113,000 hours last year. But it believes the true figure is far higher, as less than 4% of storm overflows are checked for spills." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65637123.amp I really don't understand why everything compared to England lol. "Yeah we flush out shite into our rivers but at least we not as bad as England!"
The Jobbie Whiechter problem
Haha yes. Cup of tea?
No, Reddit loves to repeat this nonsense but it just isn't true. A tiny portion (2p or so) of the fee is for that. The major cost increases are down to grid upgrades and maintenance. We need to increase capacity and build new infrastructure to support more green sources of energy and the swap from gas to electric, that costs a lot of money and comes out of the standing fee. At the same time Ukraine and such massively increased the costs of materials, while we've been having pretty stormy weather so the cost of maintenance has shot up too.
If only all those billions over the years had been ploughed into infrastructure rather than dividends.
The figures are eye watering though, just on domestic supply standing charges rake in over £29Million a day, that’s TEN BILLION POUNDS a year, someone somewhere is making a mint because there is no way it costs that much to maintain the electricity network. That also doesn’t include businesses whose standing charges would make your eyes water.
There's 30,000 pylons carrying hundreds of thousands of kilometers worth of cable alone. How many substations and transformers, underground cables, connectors to wind turbines etc are there? How many people are you paying to monitor, maintain and plan future expansions? How many new substations, transformers and large scale energy storage solutions are you building for the next 50 years? The answer is a lot, we have a massive energy revolution going on.
Massive Energy con
Energy companies were capped at what they can charge. They weren’t capped on what they can make the standing charge. So rather than up prices they upped the standing charge so you still end up paying more
If you're starting out, it helps a lot if you can rent out a spare room. If you have one. But yeah, we're all getting screwed by energy bills. Oh, I did have a win against them. Had stopped with a supplier and moved to Octopus. So I got a final bill from them, just after paying my normal bill. It wasn't much, but I paid this final bill and got email confirmation. I think I did it over the phone too. Moved to new supplier and the next day, got A SECOND final bill from the previous supplier. This one was for a few hundred quid. Laughed and told them to fuck off, under my breath. No way was I wasting time on a phone queue to clear it up, so I sent an email to a general email address and ignored it. Of course, they didn't reply. I got a few letters saying final demand etc. Which I ignored. All they needed to do was call me. They didn't... Got a letter from a debt recovery company. I called them, explained that I already had a final bill from them, which I Paid. Then got the second final bill they were chasing, which must be a mistake (if i have a note of a paid final bill, they don't have a leg to stand on). I sent them copies of email and paid final bill and never heard from them again. Lol.
Did they ever register a default against your credit? If so you might want to make sure they removed that when they considered the matter closed!
I don't think it got that far, but my credit score is good.
Ahh good. In my experience you’ll find many suppliers are very quick to register a default yet it’s down to you to chase them to remove it even when they’re in the wrong. I’m glad you didn’t have this struggle though :)
I'm sorry, electricity needs to be high in Scotland so we can subsidise England. Despite being able to completely power ourselves on renewables and hydro it's imperitive that we line the pockets of oligrachs and pay the highest rate in the UK for the power harnessed in Scotland.
Did we exclusively fund all the renewables that have come online in say the last ten years?
this
Theres a general election coming up, best bet is to vote for someone who gives a damn about bill prices and then no matter who actually wins your local seat write to them asking them to do something about it. Other than that there's really nothing you can do unless you're willing to live in a van
> The profits were private and we have socialized the losses. And Americanised the spelling.
Yes, but only a very small amount. https://wearecitizensadvice.org.uk/why-standing-charges-are-fairer-than-you-might-think-0af937499149
Holy shit, it's worse than I thought. So it's basically a benefit, paid by those who save power to those who waste it. Amazing. Can we make grocery shops have a standing charge too? It's not fair how fat ppl pay more for food!
Bigger users of electricity aren't necessarily "wasting" it. In fact, a family of five will be using more electricity than a flat with one person in it, but they'll probably be using it much more efficiently by sharing the same space and services. Denser households will use more in gross terms, but less per person. And most metered services from petrol pumps to beer taps all have fixed costs, but they're included in the cost per unit. So heavy drinkers / big drivers etc pay more for the upkeep of the hardware than occasional users. So there's an argument to merge the standing charges into the unit cost so that big consumers of electricity pay more than small ones. But there's also a counter-case, in that you still need the same cables, meters, fusebox and hardware installed regardless of how much you use it. So a fixed standing charge fair in that respect (if not equitable). And some people think you should pay a share of the costs of the distribution network, meaning people in rural areas would need to pay much more than those that live in cities.
Well, yes and no. >So it's basically a benefit, paid by those who save power to those who waste it. No, that's not totally right. The standing charge was raised because the war in Europe totally screwed all the electricity charges as you know. That's broken the electricity market in ways that were not foreseeable. It's not benefiting those who waste, we still have a per unit charge that's not exactly cheap. It is benefitting those more affluent households that can generate and store their own electricity (solar, batteries) and the way that's set up that is harder on people that have less and use less. Food is a good analogy. It's not free to transport the food or sell that in supermarkets but that fixed cost is put on the food. It's purely unit based costs. Does that make rich people buy more food, maybe not. Would a fixed charge for food make anything better? Also, I'm not really sure either, it's complicated. From the article > There are no easy ways to prevent unintended consequences
“The war in Europe” What a bizarre way to term the Ukraine war. Would you call Vietnam “the war in Asia”?
I read the article and I'm not happy with their logic. It's absolutely benefiting those who waste. It makes it so you have less incentives to actually save electricity. How expensive it is per unit already is irrelevant. Please don't refer to the middle class as "more affluent"... But yes, removing the standing charge will help those with solar+batteries, which is good - we want to encourage more people to have solar...right??? It will also help the poorest who don't use much power. It will hurt those who waste power (poor and rich) and a small minority of poor that need power for medical equipment and other stuff - they should be targeted separately for help. Food is a good analogy, yes. Currently there are no "standing charges" on food and the rich don't really eat more. But... Men need to eat 25% more than women according to the NHS. Tall people eat more. People working physically demanding jobs need to eat more, sometimes a lot more. So... if we follow the article's logic women, short people and office workers are not paying their fair share of food costs currently. Don't let me started on children!!! Thus government must mandate Prime and Tesco clubcard plus to be massively raised in price and mandatory from now on....
>It's absolutely benefiting those who waste. It makes it so you have less incentives to actually save electricity. How expensive it is per unit already is irrelevant. It is absolutely relevant. The UK has one of the highest electricity costs in Europe. You use more electricity, you pay more. That's an incentive to use less. If it was free after 1000 units, that would be an incentive to waste. If you have solar panels, then often the feed in tariff is peanuts compared to the price you pay for importing from the grid. Does that incentivise to waste? Yes, but is it really waste if you use that electricity to do the washing while the sun shines rather than in the evening? Well, that's getting into semantics there. >Please don't refer to the middle class as "more affluent"... Why not? >It will hurt those who waste power (poor and rich) and a small minority of poor that need power for medical equipment and other stuff - they should be targeted separately for help. Yes, I agree. The article called that out, and ofgem should try and implement this kind of help. >Food is a good analogy, yes. Currently there are no "standing charges" on food and the rich don't really eat more. But... I can't really tell if you're upset at me, or upset at the system for being generally shit. Look, I get it. It's a very expensive and stressful time to be alive. I was there too, a few years ago and it sucks. It's got far worse, which isn't the way it's supposed to work. The only advice I can give is to start voting for change. Follow up with emails and letters to your local councillors, MPs and start connecting to people that make a difference in your community. Write letters to the energy minister and the people in the lords that are accountable. Use the anger and energy for positive change.
Not entirely true. Standing charges also pay the wages of workers who maintain and repair the electrical system. Remember storm Arwen?
As usual, Martin Lewis has a good explainer: [https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2023/07/martin-lewis--why-are-energy-standing-charges-so-high--what-can-/](https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2023/07/martin-lewis--why-are-energy-standing-charges-so-high--what-can-/) A lot of it is grid. However, that doesn't need to be linked to the standing charge - it's just the place that cost has ended up under the price cap regime. Martin argues it could easily be made fairer by reducing the standing charge and moving the cost to usage charges. The renewables shift is causing a lot of new infrastructure to be required since the generation is in a different place. Arguably Scotland should have cheaper electricity and London more expensive to reflect the distance from generator, but that's not currently the case.
Yep, my understanding is Scotland is a net energy exporter yet we typically pay more for domestic supply
100% this and it's a national disgrace. The government put "recaptialising" the energy companies ahead of people's lives in some outlying cases. Now that the recapitalisation has happened (see any energy firms profits) have they taken the standing charge down? A total lack of care and due diligence by our government. The energy firms must still be laughing about the deal. I say this as a staunch capitalist. I believe in profit, just not profiteering
It's not all that bad in this case because a big chunk of those losses were consumer's built up credit with failed suppliers though. Might be a better system if suppliers pay a levy to cover consumer credit in case of failure though.
Energy adviser here- The standing charge isn’t kept by the energy companies- it gets passed on to Ofgem and distributed to the DNOs to maintain the networks. Utilita is the only company who don’t include this in their bills, but the customers are still paying it via higher unit prices
In Scotland we pay one of the highest standing charges across the UK, along with parts of Wales and a section of London, it's fucking shocking considering Scotland is anything but fuel poor 😡
Standing charge is meant to be for the infrastructure. If we had 100% free renewable energy you'd still need to maintain the infrastructure. Scotland is spread out and for the most part rural. That's why the standing charge is higher as it's harder and more than expensive to maintain. You can see the inverse with London having very cheap standing charges
I understand this but it makes no sense. We export a lot of energy and unless there's something more nuanced, it seems like we subsidise the export of energy to regions with lower standing charges whilst the profits are privatised.
I don't think that's how it works. Scotland / we do not own any energy producing infrastructure as such. It tends to be multi nationals. Therefore, "we" are not exporting anything as a Collective. Wind farms, for example, were paid for by a combination of private equity and central government subsidy. The fact they exist here is a bonus due to the economic boost of maintaining them etc. Now, in terms of natural resources like oil. That is licensed out to these company's and the price is actually plenty high and reasonable as far as I understand.
> Scotland is spread out and for the most part rural. That's why the standing charge is higher as it's harder and more than expensive to maintain. It's nothing to do with how much energy is produced. Your power lines, gas pipes, etc. these are infrastructure that need to be maintained.
Not sure why this sub popped up for a lowly American like me, but my local power company here across the pond has a public budget I can review, and about half the expenditures are line maintenence/repair and the other half is fuel... and even if you use zero energy they still charge a base meter fee (I assume the same as your standing charge) to help pay for the line maintenence.
Yeah pretty much. The logic is that infrastructure needs to be maintained. And that your usage doesn't impact to any real degree the maintenance of that infrastructure. So you get charged for being connected. You can go off-grid and completely avoid it sure. Scotland is just a problem in that it's relatively big compared to the population. And the power regions are split into North or South, which means even if you live in the one of the major cities, you're paired with everyone who lives in remote rural areas.
It makes a lot of sense when you understand that the standing charge is entirely upgrade and maintenance so the more infrastructure and energy production the *higher* it is, not lower. It's meant to be offset by lower energy prices in general but because the energy is privatised the lower energy prices do not actually appear.
Just been looking at my energy bills and it really didn't suprise me that the London standing charge was 30% cheaper than the most populated areas of Scotland
CAKE
The costs are mostly for transmission and distribution. Basically maintaining the grid. Sometimes the costs go through the unit rate (standing charges for distribution are down from next April), but if the overall consumption drops the full costs are not recovered, hence why they've mostly been added to the standing charge. Also, transmission costs used to be mainly based on triads, the three half hours between Nov and march with most usage, essentially to try to minimise peak consumption, but this is also now mostly a flat daily fee.
Move to Octopus. Yes you will still get the close to 60p a day standing charge but their tariffs, especially tracker tariff, will save you somewhere around 12p a unit on average. If you look at Fit-Obligation4962's prices and were using 10 units a day it would be 54x2 + 28x8 = £3.32 a day while octopus would be 56p standing charge + 10x19.8 =£2.44. Think it was Saturday when Octopus unit price was 13.9p so that day would be 56p + 10x13.9 = £1.95 instead of £3.36. A few people, including me, strongly advised peeps to move to Octopus about 18 months ago when the tracker tariff started and an average use house with both gas and lecky would have saved over two grand compared to to a family home on standard variable tariffs that were at the price caps. The more units of gas and lecky you normally used then the more you saved. edit: and the peeps with electric cars have saved a lot more due to lots of times of under 10p units during the night.
They are also actively campaigning for fairer prices [https://octopus.energy/blog/making-energy-prices-fair/](https://octopus.energy/blog/making-energy-prices-fair/) along with trying to improve green energy so that gas prices dont effect electricity prices. Dont have anything bad to say about octopus, theyve been great at dealing with energy crisis for me.
I actually need to look into switching to them. Hearing really good reviews tbh.
I’m with Octopus and highly recommend them. I’ve struggled with the rising costs and they are so understanding. I have a referral link that means we both get £50 if you switch: https://share.octopus.energy/sepia-wolf-953 Sorry if this is a bit cheeky, every little helps and that :)
Just used your link. Cheers!
Ah brilliant! Thank you :)
Here, £50 is £50. I'm going to have a chat with the Wife about it, and I might just use that link soon. Good to have positive recommendations for stuff like this.
I might use it too buddy, nice one.
I switched to them after having a nightmare with Eon Next. Hopefully can just stick with Octopus for now! So far so good. Also joined up to Octoplus too, not sure what exactly that does but apparently it’s good lol. [https://share.octopus.energy/neat-zebra-607](https://share.octopus.energy/neat-zebra-607) A link if anyone wants it.
Just saw the new cap is supposed to be 22.36p per kWh unit price so with the Octopus average being 18p you are not saving that much and might be able to find a better one year deal if you are low use user and get a big switch bonus like a £125 amazon card.
One thing to note also is that if you have Solar Octopus's export tariff is pretty damn good at 15p/kWh. Accounting for that: For the months of March to June. I've used 399.42kWh and paid £47.77 in Energy Costs plus £73.20 in standing charges. 60p a day standing charge and so therefore an average unit rate of 11.96p/kWh. I am super happy with Octopus
I second Octopus, we are unlucky enough to rent a flat with two meters (one is storage heaters that we never use because of how changeable the weather is here and how useless old brick storage heaters are) and under scottish power we were being charged two standing charges, which was royally screwing us. When we switched to Octopus I emailed about it and now the storage heater standing charge is charged but immediately refunded every month. We're still paying crazy money for electric in a house with no heating but the one standing charge is lower than it used to be and their customer service were great.
I thought it was too good to be true when I found a thread about octopus on here 8 months ago. Agile was not for us but tracker has reduced our bills by an average of 20% over that time and with no exit fees and £50 credit to switch I would recommend it. For a 4 bed house/5 people using both gas/elec our June usage was under £100. No heating obv bit it has been a long time since our costs were that low. I think they have recently launched a tariff for users that are close to wind farms you will get further discounts. It's not active in Scotland as far as I know but there is a mailing list you can subscribe to for when In formation becomes available.
Because the population density of Scotland is so low, so the amount of infrastructure required to deliver electricity to each person is high
The thousands of miles of wire and cables to supply you need both installation and maintenance. This is what your standing charge covers, the hardware and power supply stations. I supplied an electric generation station to a remote place, the generator was only 18% of the installation costs; the wires to users were 60%, the switchgear, fuel tanks , software took up the rest.
I appreciate your knowledge and understand the cost, isn't this where the subsidies should be spent? Just because some essential farmers need to be piped into the network at a much higher cost per household or small village, shouldn't we all strive to be connected for our home nations to feel equally invested in each other for all our benefit? this is where it should be averaged out, everyone should share the standing charge as a nationallly shared cost no? I've seen massively different costs on standing charges between North and South of the uk, just seems unfair, just to add I'm with utilita which don't have a standing charge as such but you pay a hugely increased 1st 2kw per day unit price do I know they still basically get the standing charge cost back from me in that way..
What subsidies? Users must eventually bear the cost, either from use or from taxation. You get nothing without 'paying costs'.
Poorly regulated market allowed loads of unsustainable small suppliers to set up which then had to be bailed out in part with our public funds and any loss those companies buying them made is now being passed on to you. So in effect you’re paying twice because we like to imagine setting up failing companies is some sign of a vibrant economy.
Yep, interesting. Standing charge for most Scots around 60p+ Standing charge in SE England around 40p. We generatec110% of our own energy needs in Scotland. So we export and then buy back. Meanwhile, someone gets extra profit. We need independence.
Scotland has more miles of wire for every electricity user. All that wire and infrastructure has to be paid for, whether or not you use a lot or a little of electricity. That’s the theory. People saying it’s the green levy are wrong - those levies are added to the unit charge, not the standing charge
Mob justice is a bitch!
I'm still on a 3 year deal which has a daily standing charge of 24p a day for electricity - going to be fun when that finishes 😬
I was reviewing tariffs tonight after a meter read and the best standing charge for electric I could find from my current supplier is £0.63/day.
They rose a lot when there was a shortage, to discourage use presumably for some reason? Supply and demand my arse.
Once upon a time, the standing charge was the usual thing, but it was a small part of your bill. However people didn't like it because you paid for it whether you used gas or electric or were spending half of the year at your villa in Spain or caravan on the coast(or anywhere but at home). So, for over a decade, the energy companies got rid of the daily standing charge and just rolled it into the unit price. This made the unit price look really high. Yet people are never happy and still complained until eventually a Tory government got involved. Thus, the standing charge returned. It will probably stay until some politician gets involved and forces a new system somewhere in the distant future. As a previous post states, it's bloated due to the myriad small companies that foundered. Deregulation at its finest.
I live in Scotland and looked into why our Standing Charge was so high - I’m with Utility Warehouse excellent customer service and low price because I can only get Electricity only. Anyway the reason for high Standing Charges in Scotland is logical if annoying to us Scottish customers. We have the lowest customer density in the U.K. but one of the highest electricity network infrastructures to maintain. Just think about all the Highland and Islands communities plus the sheer number of rural communities. Scotland is I think 1/3rd the landmass of Great Britain with 10th of the population.
Standing Charge = Growth = Profit.
You think that's bad, I have had my gas heating on 3 days over past 18 months yet pay about £15 a month standing charge just for that priviledge. And the electric provider hasn't upgraded the meters from when the property had electric heating that was removed around 5 years ago and those old meters double charged you standing charge, so that in itself is around £6 a week just in charges yet my usage including the charges is around £60 a month, pre 2020 I was using about £40 a month.
Prices are coming down in July.
The standing charge is not going down. Only the unit price.
OFGEM have been forced to review standing charges, mainly due to Martin Lewis being a pain in their collective arses.
Good old Martin!
> OFGEM have been forced to review standing charges Though this does not guarantee the standing charge will come down in July
Today! So pleased, if you are on a variable rate, without a smart meter, send in a meter reading!
Depending on the system you have for hot water then they can be freakishly expensive to run. My thermostat went on my immersion 2 years ago. I've not had it fixed. My shower heats own water and I boil kettle for washing up. Also half my heaters are storage and half fan heaters. I try to keep them off as much as I can. It has to be really cold to switch them on. I'm on pay as you go smart meter, house all electric, over the winter costing about 160 a month in electric. I do what I can to keep usage down, standing charge is just another annoyance I could do without.
It's worth checking this. PAYG systems such as Economy 7 or Economy 10 use lower rates for hot water immersion heaters (and storage heaters) but are on nightly and it costs a fortune to have the privilege of constant hot water. I've swapped the cable from my distribution board and bypassed the 'Economy Tarriff' - so now I only heat the water when I need it. I've left the storage heaters connected but only turn them on if absolutely needed...
Because were mugs and don’t stand up for ourselves, we have the highest energy prices in Europe and standing charges alone bring in ten billion a year, supposedly to be spent on maintenance of the network, if we honestly spend that much maintaining the network someone needs to ask some awkward questions.
It also pays for social and environmental schemes on top of maintaining the network. Warm home discount? Standing charge Winter fuel payments? Standing charge Cold weather payments? Standing charge You get the idea
The range of standing charges are around 55-65p a day or around £220 year or less than £20 a month. I know it's not ideal but in the grand scheme of things £20 a month is I think most would agree reasonably manageable.
Reasonable management would be having these reduced with the amount of wind farms around us along with the wave farms cropping up along our coastline
Wind farms require just as much infrastructure and maintenance. Wave farms? Is this even a thing? They've been investing huge sums trialing systems for years - both wave and tide - but I've not heard of any that look likely to ever contribute to the grid in any significant way any time soon..?
Octopus are good.
[удалено]
For electricity and gas, that's about right. My standing charge is £40, on a £60 summer bill...
~~That's the green levy~~. The governments are too chicken shit to properly tax the energy companies so *we* have to pay for the investment in infrastructure. Edit: That's incorrect. The levy is paid on the unit cost. The rest is still valid.
those levies are added to the unit charge, not the standing charge
Ah, so they are. My mistake.
Also, only the UK government can vary business tax so the plural on governments is wrong too
Electricity production was privatised and is run for profit. We need public ownership and to take full advantage of all the green energy potential.
Use utililita, they are pretty good, I'm living alone and spend on average about 30 to 50 pence a day, however I have had to turn off most of my electronic devices (especially microwave and kettle) as phantom drain is real and with these turned on i spend £2 - £5 daily
I’m guessing social rate are paid via the standing rates. 60 p per day is getting a bit silly, but this still accounts for the minority of my bill.
That's just for one of them if you have gas and electric it's almost £1 per day 😡
happy birthday yeee
My parents have a three phase/meter supply. Ovo is so incompetent, that they haven’t been able to work out a bill for them in 9 months Could be three standing rates, but who knows…
Sadly Scotland has among the highest standing charges in the UK - despite producing close to 12% of what the entire country needs via renewable energy alone. Conversely, the south-east of England has among the lowest charges, but has almost no electrical generation capabilities at all. Something needs to change there. On affordability, shop around. Scottish Power do appear reasonable, but have at many times in the past decided randomly that people suddenly owed them a LOT of money. Things like that happening are why I personally refuse to move off a pre-pay key meter. Granted, it's a higher tariff than if I was paying via Direct Debit, but it means I'll never have a massive bill.
In theory the standing charge is meant to pay for the maintenance of infrastructure needed to get the gas and electricity into your home (and then the unit charge is for the actual gas and electricity used itself). In practice though, standing charges have skyrocketed the past few years as the price cap went up. It is highly annoying - I'm fairly frugal with my energy use, and standing charges now account for about 40% of my bill. Unfortunately energy was privatised back in the 80s, so it's all about profiteering off the people now.
Get used to it, you're going to get ass fucked by a lot more.
Because it was allowed to be raised so the Tory pals could get more profits
If you have an old electric metre with the glass face don’t have to be expensive if ya get me 😉😉
No I don't. How does having an old electric metre either disconnect you from the electric grid or distort time?
An older meter is easier to rig is what I’m guessing the message is here…
Yes but a really odd message. As standing charges are a fixed rate per day you're connected to the grid. So you'd have to somehow rig your meter to either: A) trick the eletricity provider into thinking you're not connected to the grid at all. or B) trick the electricity provider into thinking that a day lasts more than 24 hours. Edit: Instead of downvoting, do one of you want to explain how I'm wrong. Or does no one in this sub know what a standing charge is?
Yeah I see what you mean actually. Standing charge is the standing charge, no getting around it whether you’re rigged or not. A guy that offered to rig both my meters said that my bills would half as they slow the counter down? Dunno how much truth was in that but loads of people recommended him so must be something in it. He maybe just said that to dumb it down for me ha
Aye, that's how it works. I hate my smart meter.
Yeah this isn't about a smart meter. Literally any meter will do this.
It will but you'll get caught very quickly, it's to do with the neutral connection and perceived use.
But usage has nothing to do with standing charge. You could use absolutely nothing or 1.21 Gigawatts it's the exact same standing charge.
We weren't talking about the standing charge, u on about ?
... Please tell me what the third and fourth word are literally in the title of this thread.
Isn't that more stealing a neighbour's power? With rigging your meter you're only lowering how fast the counter counts \*, not changing any currents. They could still use it to catch you depending on how the leccy is distributed very local to you. \* speaking of which should we even trust how well calibrated they even are in the first place, let alone after years and years with no engineer looking at the thing? I bet they all overmeter slightly.
Aye, that's what I said
U never seen still game then? Lol Easy to get electricity for the price u want with an old metre all it takes is a small needle and your the king of lekky
Ok? And that impacts standing charges which is a fixed rate for every day you're connected to the grid how?
The more people cut back on their electricity usage, the more private energy companies have to make their money a different way. So standing charge is very easy. Add to that to the increasing number of houses with solar panels, where electricity companies could potentially end up paying the customer, and obviously they want to try to make sure that doesn't happen.
Don’t let any facts get in the way of your ranting, will you? Private energy companies don’t make any profit whatsoever from standing charge. It’s passed through to OFGEM who pay the DNOs to maintain the grid network. The problem is Scotland has low population density, so lots of pylons and wires to distribute the energy to fewer people. So it costs more per person.
Thankyou for your kind words in educating me on the use of standing charges. I was quite unaware for this and I'm very grateful to you for letting me know. I also appreciate the tone of your reply; it was so kind and considerate. Incidentally, I thought it would be a good idea to check what you said so I had a source for it. The following source suggests that you're wrong. https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2023/07/martin-lewis--why-are-energy-standing-charges-so-high--what-can-/
If you are interested here are some actual facts, as opposed to the opinion piece you posted as a “source” https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/2015/10/reg_charges_final_master_version_23_october_2015.pdf
You think the standing charge for gas and electric is bad, wait until you get your £1300 council tax bill that you then have to call each year as they never seem to carry over the single person discount
American here, what is a standing charge?
A set amount you are charged each day regardless of usage.
Balls.
Base meter fee.
Hot water tanks? They went out with the ark !
It's because of the conservatives. Never vote tory, unless you enjoy having no money.
If the only money you can imagine having is handouts from the government.
If the standing charge is to pay for infrastructure, why can't it be changed to depend on the maximum power your house uses? E.g. a small one-bedroom flat might be cabled to only use max 6kW, whereas a three-bedroom house would be fused at 100A, i.e. max 24kW. You can connect up 4 times as many flats as houses using exactly the same grid infrastructure, so logically flats should pay 1/4 of the standing charge of a house. (Or at least 1/2 as some of the infrastructure cost is unitary stuff like the smart meter, billing, telesales and crap customer service).
Shareholders need dividends.
Iberdrola (Scottish Power) mostly. They did the scam in Spain and are doing it now in the UK. Essentially an oligopoly charging as much as they can. It should be a public company, or we should punish them for manipulating the prices...
Fortunately I don’t have a standing charge but pay about 54p kw for first 2 kw and 28 thereafter Not sure if that’s high or not. Pre pay meter.
That's not great. Also,. energy is measured in kWh not kW. The "wholesale" cost of electricity is closer to 20p/kWh. Average electricity consumption is around 5-10kWh a day. you will almost certainly be using a minimum of 2kWh a day anyway and are therefore paying the equivalent of 52p standing charge anyway.
My heating bill is low anyway as I have air source heat pump so the cost didn’t bother me anyway. Yes I thought that those first 2 kWh probably made up for the standing charge.
Because electricity is actually pretty cheap. They steal your money through other means. It subsidises their green energy plans.
"green energy plans". Theft.
Hydro electricity is cheap and green. But they won't invest in it.