What a shock that was for us this morning!

Just on the news, its hard to hear through next doors window, but they say many co to shut doors in a few days as no gas, don't look good to me.
 
So in the 24 hours I've been offline we have gone from leccy getting a bit dear to Armagedon, riots, scavenging for food and arming yourself with crossbows and dodgy guns from Northern Ireland. :D

I reckon my idea of moving into the van and just drinking heavily is the best one then :D
 
We have been moved to Octopus from Avro. Only swapped to Avro end July. Previously was with Bulb, but their prices were rising so thought fixed deal was sensible....Bulb, at least, used to credit my account if we were too much in credit. Looking forward to explaining to Octopus that our winter use is much less than they forecast as we are away for months in winter! A smart meter to show our actual usage might be helpful...but the cottage is not suitable due to the places where the meters are.
I think Bush skills or at the very least, skills on keeping warm and fed without excessive energy use, may well be essential! Won't hurt many people to wear winter clothes and keep heating lower, rather than t-shirts and shorts in a highly heated house.
 
Our usage is all over the place as well as usually we are away for a 2 month bock in winter too. I was with Symbio that gave the option of actual real time billing (rather than having to use fixed monthly) based on meter readings as otherwise we would have ended up with big credit balances too.
 
We have been moved to Octopus from Avro. Only swapped to Avro end July. Previously was with Bulb, but their prices were rising so thought fixed deal was sensible....Bulb, at least, used to credit my account if we were too much in credit. Looking forward to explaining to Octopus that our winter use is much less than they forecast as we are away for months in winter! A smart meter to show our actual usage might be helpful...but the cottage is not suitable due to the places where the meters are.
I think Bush skills or at the very least, skills on keeping warm and fed without excessive energy use, may well be essential! Won't hurt many people to wear winter clothes and keep heating lower, rather than t-shirts and shorts in a highly heated house.
T shirts and shorts, lucky barstewart, naked here.
 
We are with Octopus Energy, elec 17p/kW and use £24/month. 👍
That may be what you pay now but what will it be when your contract is renewed, I pay a similar price but expect my bill to be at least double or even more when my contract renews in January. I worked out that my present monthly £120 will likely be around £260 or similar
 
Like so many others we have a log burner.

My wife and I looked at our kiln dried log store today and think we may be fine for this winter.

We will probably use less gas and more timber. Let's hope it's a shortish glitch.
Yes a log burner is a great thing, but kiln dried or even seasoned hardwood logs are also getting very expensive. I pick up bits of wood on the grass verges when driving around the countryside to top-up my wood store, especially after windy weather.

I always carry a nice sharp wood saw in the camper van to cut branches to length so they fit in the van, through the summer I collected enough wood locally to half fill a dumpy bag. I cut them to length, split the larger stuff and stack them and if you do it every year you can rotate it and have some seasoned dried wood for free.
I live in a semi rural area with a short drive into the countryside, it would obviously be difficult to do this in a large city though.😁
 
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Wood burners are ok if you want to be tied to a uncontrolled heating sys all day long.
 
Wood burners are ok if you want to be tied to a uncontrolled heating sys all day long.
Not really Trev.

I had a multi fuel Bosky 35 years ago and I fitted 2 temperature control switches to set the temperature I wanted for the radiators. I could pile it high with Mahogany logs and it would burn all day unattended. The hardwood came from old window frames, everyone was fitting plastic double glazing and 2 companies allowed me to take whatever I wanted from their skips.

I also got a lot of good wood free from various other sources.
 
Our latest wood burner has a thermostatically controlled air inlet and pipe stat, so can be 'automatic' if you want, but as this is first season we have used this one am only running it semi auto.
I always think there's something more 'pleasing' about running a wood burner in this house compared to the oil and gas boilers in the other houses.
 
Just moved house the supply is with Scottish Power, after taking Martin Lewis advice of just go on standard variable and wait a few months to see how the market goes, so thought I would do that only to be told by Scottish power that they stopped offering the standard variable tariff to new customers a few days ago and only have fixed deals for new customers now !!!
 
Just moved house the supply is with Scottish Power, after taking Martin Lewis advice of just go on standard variable and wait a few months to see how the market goes, so thought I would do that only to be told by Scottish power that they stopped offering the standard variable tariff to new customers a few days ago and only have fixed deals for new customers now !!!
I wonder if OFGEM has something to say about that. It is clearly dodging the the cap.
 
Just moved house the supply is with Scottish Power, after taking Martin Lewis advice of just go on standard variable and wait a few months to see how the market goes, so thought I would do that only to be told by Scottish power that they stopped offering the standard variable tariff to new customers a few days ago and only have fixed deals for new customers now !!!
Money saving expert has online forums. I would ask there.
 
We have been moved to Octopus from Avro. Only swapped to Avro end July. Previously was with Bulb, but their prices were rising so thought fixed deal was sensible....Bulb, at least, used to credit my account if we were too much in credit. Looking forward to explaining to Octopus that our winter use is much less than they forecast as we are away for months in winter! A smart meter to show our actual usage might be helpful...but the cottage is not suitable due to the places where the meters are.
I think Bush skills or at the very least, skills on keeping warm and fed without excessive energy use, may well be essential! Won't hurt many people to wear winter clothes and keep heating lower, rather than t-shirts and shorts in a highly heated house.
We had exactly the same problem at our last 17th cottage, the electricity smart meter was at one end and the gas was at the other end!

But with Octopus and my account I have just noticed that although we do have economy 7 and we do have the requisite smart meter, however only today I have noticed that over the past 12 months they have been supplying our electricity at the higher daytime rate, making no allowance for the economy 7, so I am now trying to tackle them about it...... However trying to contact them at the moment is nigh on impossible!
 
I would never have a smart meter, they can disconnect you from the grid if there is not enough supply! We have our own usage meters and that's enough.
 
No meter here. ;)
street lite free.png
 
I would never have a smart meter, they can disconnect you from the grid if there is not enough supply! We have our own usage meters and that's enough.
AIUI, plans are afoot to force coerce every home in Britain to have a 'next generation' smart meter so that they can turn off your high power consumers (heating, car charging, etc.) when the inevitable happens and there's not enough supply to meet demand. For those who still won't have a smart meter, they seem to be making plans to disconnect you entirely when this happens. AFAICT, this is the main reason for the big push for smart meters. However, there will be 'benefits' (rather, a way to avoid some of the price hikes) as smart meters also permit variable pricing and so those with smart meters (in conjunction with 'smart appliances') will be able to schedule laundry, car charging, etc. for times when demand for energy is less and hence less extortionately priced, while those without smart meters will get charged peak rate for everything.
 
Octopus has smart meter and 'Agile Tarif', no body in their right mind is using this at moment as the prices are so high you can't balance them with cheap off peak. Come the new generation of BEV's with V2H/V2G then many users will not be at all worried about being cut off during high demand high priced periods as they will be using car to power their house, and maybe even getting paid high prices for powering grid.
 

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