Friday 8 July 2011

'The Days of Cheap Energy Are Over'

Consumers last saw a year of double price hikes in 2008 when energy bills rocketed by £334 or 41% as a result of consecutive rounds of price increases.

For most of us though, today’s news tells us something really important – the days of cheap energy are over and it’s time that we all started to understand what this means for our bills and how we use energy.

Once these hikes kick in the average household energy bill will be an eye-watering £1,193 a year.

This is an all-time high and makes it imperative for customers to start thinking about how they can bring this cost down.
There are two key steps to this – pay the lowest possible price for your energy and cut down on the amount of energy you use.

To pay the lowest price you need to be thinking of going onto dual fuel (this means taking both gas and electricity from one supplier and paying by monthly direct debit.

Suppliers offer attractive discounts for customers doing this.

You could also sign up to an online energy plan – these are consistently the most competitive plans in the market.

In fact, the difference between the cheapest online plan and the most expensive standard plan will be £450 a year from August – that is the equivalent of saving around a third off your yearly fuel costs – an amount well worth saving!

That said, in the face of rising prices many of us will prefer the security of a fixed price energy plan.
Switchers are signing up to fixed price energy plans.
Energy deals can disappear swiftly from the market so people need to act quickly to secure the best deals while they can.

Having sorted out your energy tariff the next thing is to look at how much energy you use.

Energy efficiency is a real buzz term at the moment, but it is a powerful weapon in every household’s armoury when it comes to fighting off high energy prices.

The key thing is to start thinking of these things now and not to leave it until your bills have gone through the roof.

full article

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