Good news that UK electricity and gas prices have been falling over the last few months. Choosing the best tariff and supplier can save you £100s per year and moving to a renewable energy supplier also helps the planet.
Current advice on the market, including from Martin Lewis, is if any firm, including your current one, offers a fixed energy tariff for under the new price caps, that looks like a decent deal. Weston Turville is in the Eastern region, so the price cap until end of this September is 30.7p per kWh for electricity and 7.4p per kWh for gas. From 1 October the cap falls to 27.9p and 6.8p respectively. Other types of tariff might be better depending on your energy usage if you have an electric vehicle (EV) or can shift your use of electricity. These include the Agile time of use tariff from Octopus and cheap overnight tariffs for EV users such as Electric Driver from British Gas and Intelligent from Octopus.
But who do you go with, especially as price is only one factor in choosing a supplier? The top six overall from Which, the independent review organisation, are Octopus Energy, Utilita, Utility Warehouse, Co-op Energy, E and Ovo Energy. You can compare energy providers and find the right tariff for you by using comparison websites where you can also filter on green or renewable deals.
Some people are put off moving energy suppliers to get the best deal, due to stories about perceived difficulties of moving companies, having a smart meter installed if you don’t have one and possible billing problems. The following companies have signed up to the Energy Switch Guarantee which sets out assurances on timescales and billing during a switch:
E.ON
EDF
Octopus Energy
Outfox the Market
Shell Energy
SO Energy
SSE.
Ben Brownlee, Climate Action Weston Turville
21 September 2023