The Big Six energy companies made a lot of money during our cold weather, but you can still save hundreds of pounds on your bills.

The average profits made by energy firms per household rose by 40% this winter, as the UK turned up the heat and their wholesale prices fell.

That means the Big Six – British Gas, E.ON, Scottish Power, Scottish & Southern Energy, EDF Energy and npower – are enjoying the highest profit levels in five years.

Ofgem reported the average net profit made from every dual fuel customer is £105 a year – up from £75 in November, although it’s fair to point out that these figures are disputed by the industry.

British Gas has cut bills for standard customers reducing gas prices by 7% and saving around 8million homes £56 a year. However, the other five energy giants haven’t followed yet.

If you are struggling to manage your gas and electricity bills, or just want to save some cash – there’s one simple way to bring down your bills.

Consumers using a standard dual fuel tariff are wasting hundreds of pounds a year by not switching to a cheaper deal.

As of now, customers paying quarterly for their provider’s standard tariff are billed an average of £1,2253.29 a year.

Yet the average bill for an online tariff, paid for monthly, is just £920.27 a year – that’s £305.02 less, almost 25% cheaper.

Right now the cheapest provider is British Gas. Its WebSaver 6 product has an average bill of just £899.04, but the best deal for you depends on how much energy you use and your region.

One great way to cut your energy bills and help the planet is to use less energy in your home.

No one should have to be worried about turning on the heating when it’s cold, but simple habit changes can save money.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

Moneysupermarket.com discovered almost one million households are not paying for their gas and electricity. Half of those one million have not tried to identify their provider. The other half are not paying because they have not been acknowledged as a customer by their supplier. It was also revealed that 1.1 million households admit to moving out of their property without settling their gas and electricity bills.

Utilities manager at moneysupermarket.com, Scott Byrom said: “Our research reveals nearly a million Brits manage to slip through the net and escape paying for their gas and electricity. Whether this is by deliberately keeping a low profile, or just being lost by their supplier, I would advise against staying invisible – you could find you are landed with a hefty bill when your provider finally catches up with you.

“To find out your electricity supplier you need to call your local distribution network operator (DNO) as it varies by region,⁴ and to identify your gas supplier you’ll need the Meter Point Administration Service.⁵

“After a significant period of non-payment, there could also be complications over the amount you owe, especially if you don’t retain proof of your usage or the meter readings from when you moved into the property. From a billing point of view, a supplier can only charge you retrospectively for the past 12 months of energy used but at today’s prices this could see you incur a bill of around £1,200.”

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

Solar panels and water butts alone are too small to be able to help Britain meet its carbon emission target, according to a new report.
The Royal Academy of Engineering suggests that the financial outlay on such technology does not reap sufficient reward for it to be considered a shrewd investment and calls for the government to relax the rules on large scale production.
The author of the report, Doug King, acknowledges that the methods of producing green energy are positive for the environment, but feels more could be done if items such as solar panels were increased in size and more widely used.
He stated that the individual panels are nothing more than “eco-bling”, with specialist developments packed with panels.
Mr. King would like to see the aim for all homes to be carbon neutral by 2016 relaxed, providing developers make equivalent contributions to wind farms, tidal energy production and solar energy farms.
He also claims the things that save significant amounts of cash are not being done.
For example, Mr. King suggests that for a wind turbine to be effective on a home-by-home basis, each would have to be so big they would shake the property to its foundations.
The RAE report concludes that it may be best for the actual building of homes to be changed so that, rather than being designed to produce green energy, they are of the highest standard when it comes to saving energy.
High-quality wall insulation is cited as being a particularly strong way of achieving this.
Mr. King also suggests that research into the current skills of the workers expected to deliver green technology to buildings across the land is carried out and weaknesses identified.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

The process of retrofitting should be made easier of more homes are going to take part in the process, according to the Green Alliance.
Often retrofitting involves the installation of energy efficiency measures in existing buildings to bring them up to the environmental standards of the new buildings. According to the Green Alliance, this is important as 75 per cent of the houses which are lived in today will still be occupied in 2050.
Deputy director of Green Alliance, Thomas Lingard, said that as more established brands start to offer retrofitting as part of their services more people will warm up to the idea. However, the government needs to make sure that they are doing enough to encourage the practice.
He stated: “What we really need is a hard commitment from the government to bring in policies which will make these kinds of retrofits more attractive…so that it is the rule and not the exception that these kinds of things are happening.”
Making energy efficiency improvements to your property can lower your gas and electricity bills. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change up to £1 in every £3 spent on energy is being wasted if your home isn’t properly insulated.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

It appears that householders are trying to conserve the amount of energy they have been using during the cold snap to keep their bills low.
Commenting on Scottish and Southern Energy’s interim management statement, uSwitch.com said that high energy bills are such a worry to some people that they will deliberately use less fuel.
The supplier implied that homeowners were turning their heating down through the cold snap as they saw a year-on-year decrease in the amount of energy used this winter.

Director of consumer policy at uSwitch.com, Ann Robinson, said: “Self-rationing in this way is the biggest warning sign yet about the affordability of energy.”

She advised switching to an online energy plan, as this can reduce the cost of bills by an average of £300 and would mean that households would not have to go cold amid worries about fuel costs.

Consumers who are worried about power cuts were advised by uSwitch.com to keep torches and extra batteries close to hand if the lights go out.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

The recent cold snap shows the financial benefits to be gained from running an energy-efficient home. New figures revealed that an extra £1.2 billion worth of power was leaked by homes and offices in the last two weeks alone, compared with a normal winter.

Experts from the management consultancy firm Faithful and Gold conducted a study of Britain’s 26 million homes and two million offices, concluding that the significant amount of cash had been thrown away due to poor energy efficiency.

The research aimed to find out the amount of energy required to maintain a temperature of at least 20 degrees Celsius in a home as outside thermometers plummeted to minus two degrees Celsius.

Ellie Horwitch-Smith, an energy management expert with the firm, said: “As outside temperatures fall, the cold truth is that already inefficient buildings perform increasingly badly as heating systems struggle to maintain the indoor temperatures demanded of them. Heat is simply lost at a greater rate if the temperature drops.”

Some techniques which could be used by householders in a bid to reduce the amount of energy lost include improved insulation on all perimeter walls.

Scaled-down results of Faithful and Gold’s research showed that an average three-bed semi-detached British property spent an additional £37 heating their home over the last fortnight of cold weather.

An energy-efficient property – while also inevitably producing greater bills during an icy period – would have resulted in just a £23 premium.

The team of experts also estimated that a particularly inefficient office may have cost bosses an extra £149 on top of normal rates to heat over a two week period.

Last September Ratedpeople.com advised homeowners to deploy insulation products in advance if they wished to reduce their gas and electricity bills.

The website also suggested that insulation helps to preserve warmth inside a home once temperatures outside begin to fall.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

According to a charity, older people are worrying about the gas and electric bills they will be getting after this very cold weather.
Age Concern believes that the recent rises in inflation, coupled with the inevitable expense of higher heating bills, means some elderly members of the population could struggle to pay their bills this month.
The Institute for Public Policy Research also called on the government this week to do more to help vulnerable groups with the rising cost of electricity. They believe the current measures are not ‘adequately addressing the problem.’
Head of policy at Age Concern and Help the Aged, Andrew Harrop, said: “Many older people on low incomes will dread a bounce back of inflation, as they are already bracing for a round of post-freeze energy bills. They will be worrying about whether their incomes will stretch to meet essential costs over the coming months.”
The Independent Newspaper’s advice is for people to compare and switch energy suppliers to get the best deal.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

The idea of text fundraising might be quite a new one, but it?s starting to see a massive explosion in its use that could see it overtaking much more established methods of donating to a charity, especially during a crisis situation.

After the devastating earthquakes hit Haiti earlier this month the American Red Cross launched its campaign within hours. Citizens were able to donate money through the regular methods of cheques and credit cards, but they were also given the option of sending a text message, the amount of donation in the message would then be added onto the user?s telephone bill.

Mobile operators waived the standard charge of sending a message and the news of the new way of donating spread through online communities such as Facebook and Twitter incredibly quickly.

Director of MobileActive.org, Katrin Verclas explains the concept in more detail:

?They text, and in this case the key word ‘Haiti,’ to a short code which is a five-digit number. And then they will be asked essentially to confirm the $5 or $10 dollar contribution.

And then at the end of the month when they receive their bill, there will be a charge in the amount of $5 or $10 dollars that the customer pays as part of their regular phone bill.?

It?s not the first time SMS messaging has been used for this purpose, but it is one of the first times it has been successfully used by US aid groups. European aid agencies had turned to SMS for donations long before, during the Indian Ocean tsunami five years ago.

What do you think? Does using your phone bill and messaging encourage you to donate or would you do it regardless of the method used? Does using your phone make you feel differently about donating or change the amount you would donate?

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

Lancashire authorities have plans to use thermal imaging equipment to help households reduce their gas and electricity bills.

This new energy survey will use planes equipped with the technology to fly over the region and identify the houses which are losing the most heat through their walls and roof.

Work will start on showing households how they can use affordable measures to reduce their bills once these least energy efficient areas have been identified.

According to the Energy Saving Trust, households could be paying over £100 extra a year on their heating bills if their lofts are not properly insulated.

The cabinet member for environment and planning at Lancashire Country Council, Councillor Tim Ashton said: “Cutting down on energy use makes sense at all times, and in the current economic climate anything we can do to help families and firms to cut costs is very welcome.”

Contributions from the Energy Saving Trust, the Northwest Improvement and Efficiency Partnership and 15 councils across Lancashire have helped to fund the project.

All households in the UK are now eligible to take part in the government’s boiler scrappage scheme, which allows people to trade in their old inefficient boiler for money off a new model or a heat pump.

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.

After today, anyone who comes to your door to try and persuade you to switch energy providers will have to give you a written quote before the sale can go through. This is good news for consumers as it gives them greater protection from doorstep energy sales people.

More than half of consumers who switch energy providers do so because they have been directly approached by a sales person and of those eight in ten switch because they have been promised cheaper rates for gas and electricity. Some customers have ended up in worse deals after signing up for a new energy tariff from a door-to-door sales person.
It has been difficult for customers to check to make sure they actually moved to the best tariff for them, but thanks to today’s rule change, customers will have a written quote and can compare the tariff they are being offered with the rest of the market.

Consumers should always be able to compare all their energy costs to find the cheapest available.
Scott Byrom, utilities expert at moneysupermarket.com said: “It’s a very positive change and will help rebuild trust in door-to-door activity…

Customers can quite easily check the quote on a price comparison site or suppliers own site and, by doing so, check other deals available on the market before making a decision. If they do switch on the doorstep, the quote can help ensure they get the right prices when their account goes live.”

©2012 MoneyBlog. All Rights Reserved.