We all know what's going to happen, and sooner rather than later. I'm expecting energy prices are going to increase across the board by around 50% on gas and electricity. My thoughts then turned to the espresso machine…probably uses more power when it's cold, perhaps as much as 100W per hour..I know some people have cited massive increases in their bills when they have an espresso machine on all day…so I'm preparing, I would imagine the machine will lose only half the energy this way? The underneath towel is to add the extra insulation under the group and keep the top towel wrap in place. I'm already turning green! [upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/sPQzAA6.png]

@"DavecUK"#p4730 Classic Dave’s solution to the problem! 😂😂 I continue to switch the machine off after making coffee. I don’t want the machine to run from 6 am to 9 pm. 😊 Am making a separate thread for green!

me personally, pureplanet went bump on me giving me a massive increase at home, was tied till april 2022 at work my gas and elec have no cap, since march 2021 when i cam out of contract ive seen my monthly elec bill go from £200 to £430 per month, these are out of contract rates atm, its getting crazy

Well, after about 20 minutes of non-use my Sage turns itself off. Plus as it takes only about 6 minutes to get up to temp it shouldn't use too much. After a really good two year fixed deal came to an end in December, we've just gone on to Octopus Go tariff where between 12:30 and 4:30 am the charge is 5p kWh. No good for the coffee machine admittadly unless I'm having a spot of insomnia, but we put our washing machine on for then as that eats electric and I charge my EV then too.

Our tariff is fixed until Aug 23. So, Am good. But, our costs did go up by £50 a month to about £162 pm. Thank God, I went fixed as some one advised flexible. 😊

We changed to Octopus when we were down south, we have always been on a fixed tariff and our bills were around £120 month. We moved up North to Yorkshire and bought a new build our bills are £80 month at most. We renewed to a fixed tariff again in September after a lot of deliberation thinking prices had been stable for some time, so glad we did. Hopefully when it all settles down we can get another fixed rate not sure it will be the same though. All our family are with Octopus they have been really good.

@"LMSC"#p4731 you can because it only takes 15m to warm up, so it's actually worth switching it off if your not going to use it…in fact, even a low power mode would be worthwhile on the Evo, might see if something can be programmed into the motherboards, to actually drop the group temp after a configurable number of minutes of non use. e.g. drop by n C, after n minutes, with brew boiler switching off after n minutes. This is because brew boiler only takes 3 minutes to warm up. In this way a machine could drop into economy (if you enable it) after say 15 minutes and be warmed up again by touching the panel. As soon as the group hits the preset temp, you will be ready to go, probably about 3 or 4 minutes….depending on how low you turn the group down. The energy saving would actually be quite large!

@"DavecUK"#p4762 I am sure you will come up with a solution as an enhancement in the future release. If it can be programmed like a PC - Hibernate, Sleep, Restart and Shut Down! 😬 We mostly make 5 -6 cups in total 2 in the morning, 1 at noon, 1 in the afternoon and 2 in the evening ! Perhaps, decaf in the night.

@"Cuprajake"#p4732 I was with simplicity energy, fortunately they went bust a few months before the energy crisis and I went onto the supplier of last resort British Gas, something called Simplicity Promis until April 2022 which felt like being rodgered up the rear end, but as it turned out was a blessing in disguise. 3p per unit for gas and 17.9 for leccy

I am with octopus on their flexible rate since my fixed rate with them ended at the beginning of December. I am not sure how much I am paying monthly ( was previously £59) as I have just had smart meters fitted and the readings haven’t settled into any pattern but watching the monitor thingy add up the electric units is a bit of a sharp intake of breath whenever the electric shower is used. To make matters worse, my boomerang child has just boomeranged back home to live again and takes two showers a day and wears clothes once before throwing them in the wash. I have been dithering over fixing the rate before April but just cannot commit myself to a tariff that doubles the price of my gas for the next three months even though I know things are going to get very much worse. I switch my machine and grinder off at the wall as soon as I am done.

> @"4W5"#p4814 I am with octopus on their flexible rate since my fixed rate with them ended at the beginning of December. I am not sure how much I am paying monthly ( was previously £59) as I have just had smart meters fitted and the readings haven’t settled into any pattern you must absolutely know the rate per kW hour and standing charge so you can make apples for apples comparisons. They rely on obfuscating these numbers.

Energy Prices

Cuprajake

Side note app, tesco are operating on 97% profit compared to pre pandemic sales, mp therese coffey believes the main supermarkets are very competitive with each other and theres no price fixing going on, ….

Cuprajake

Saw this today looking back at my pictures, what a difference a year makes, these went bump on me, shafting me with shell who plainly ripped us off for 6 months before we could move away

DavecUK

Cuprajake Sadly we will never see prices like that again, because they think we can pay they will make sure we do.

Nightrider_1uk

Gagaryn Old laptops in general continue to work - it’s our expectations and uses cases which makes them obsolete

Whilst this is generally true, there are two important factors to consider.

Both windows and Mac software will only be supported for a certain time frame on both operating systems, raising security issues once software updates stop
Batteries will need replacing and may not be available.

mobius

Nightrider_1uk Absolutely on the updates. An operating system without security updates, if it’s being connected to the internet, is just a timebomb.

LMSC

We are still on the good old rate. Ends in Sep this year.

Power 18.82 now; standing charge 21.68

Gas 3.8; standing charge 23.73

Cuprajake

I worked out that the cost of living increase from 22-23 has seen us as a family loose just under £3000 to it

And as a small business owner I’ve not been able to give myself a pay rise since 2020, staff have.

Any increase in profit our business has made has gone to the increase in all overhead

It’s a very bad time to run a small micro business

LMSC

Cuprajake Hope it gets better soon.

MattH

If anyone is on the Octopus Tracker - keep an eye out when it’s due to expire.

Last year the email was worded as “do nothing and we will continue you on the tracker”

This year “do nothing and we will put you on the flexible tariff - please reply to the email if you wish to stay on the tracker”

Cheers

Matt

Pompeyexile

To be fair to Octopus they let me know in very good time when my deal was coming to an end and yes, said the same to me, giving me plenty of time to look at the new tariffs and go for one that suited me being an EV driver, which gives me 10p per kWh between the hours of 11:30pm and 5:30am when I charge my car.

Having said that, I’m not even having to use the home charger at the moment, because where my other half works (42 miles round trip) they have just got EV’s for thier managers and put charging points in their car park free to use. She goes into the office twice a week and books a charging point for 4 hours and so it is costing us nowt to run at the moment, unless we do over 280 miles in one trip….which is rare.

Yes I have a very smug look on my face as I type this…☺️

DavecUK

Pompeyexile Is it worth getting a storage battery and inverter for those days when you are not charging your car might well have a 8 year payback and be something worth exploring?

Nightrider_1uk

DavecUK After about 8 years, I would be dubious of the remaining storage capacity of the batteries, they might well need changing by then

Pompeyexile

DavecUK Is it worth getting a storage battery and inverter for those days when you are not charging your car might well have a 8 year payback and be something worth exploring?

Would love to have both solar and batteries but just do not have the capital to buy them.

DavecUK

Nightrider_1uk After about 8 years, I would be dubious of the remaining storage capacity of the batteries, they might well need changing by then

Not at all, I have run electric cars for 10 years, my I3 was 6 years old and no battery degradation I could detect. The batteries in a wall unit should last 15 to 20 years and still have decent capacity. I would of course recommend erring on the side of 20% more capacity than you think you will need. e.g. if you think you need 8kW go for 9.6kW.

Cuprajake

App the fixed deals may be coming back. Quick let’s fix at £4k per year…

DavecUK

Cuprajake App the fixed deals may be coming back. Quick let’s fix at £4k per year…

I’d be more interested in the prices fairly reflecting wholesale energy prices…after all they went up quick enough, funny how they drop much slower and never to where they were before.

Cuprajake

powers that be are letting us have some breathing space, to save up for our winter bill, july will see prices comedown for a while….

Nightrider_1uk

The Wholesale price gas and electricity is 4x what it was in June 2020. Back then it was approx 4p per Kw/Hr for Electricity and 1p per Kw/Hr for gas Now its approx 12p for Electricity and 4p for Gas

Pompeyexile

Chuffin Hell! I just went on-line and have seen that I am over £800 in credit on my gas and electric and I am just about to pay my June direct debit payment, which at the moment stands at - after we lost the £67 government help - £237 per month.

I think I need to re-assess.

DavecUK

Pompeyexile Chuffin Hell! I just went on-line and have seen that I am over £800 in credit on my gas and electric and I am just about to pay my June direct debit payment, which at the moment stands at - after we lost the £67 government help - £237 per month.

I’ve been 600 or 900 credit for a year, but they finally lowered by DD to £108 from £170, I supposed they finally realised I would simply build up another 350+ onto my current £600 credit remaining after the winter of discontent….pushing it up to almost £1000.

I don’t actually understand why we cannot just be rendered a bill and pay it….one time BT used something called a budget account (a fixed amount every month) for bad payers. Now it seems that we pay more for paying a bill on recpt (if the supplier even offers that option), and even if that bill is automatically paid by DD. The norm now is not a discount AND to pay a fixed amount every month. I would love OFGEM to actually fix this, but they never work on behalf of consumers do they.

Trouble it it’s a price controlled cartel, with no effective competition.

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