The energy companies must love the Winter because even the most frugal customer has to turn up the heating. Especially if there's cold snap going on. Looking out the window, I see snow on the ground again. We hardly ever get snow in the south-east of England at this time of year. We almost never get a white Christmas.
So power suppliers must be laughing all the way to the bank this year.
I hate the fact that they hike the fuel prices in Autumn (often by above inflation), announce huge profits in the Spring, then make some token cut in prices come early Summer.
The above graph shows the typical provider response to wholesale gas prices (The blue line). Notice how they increase the price to the customer (The other line) in response to rapidly increasing wholesale prices in 2008 and yet, as the latter falls equally quickly in 2009, the retail price was left at practically the same level until the present day? Yeah, thanks for that guys.
It's this kind of thing that makes me all the more determined to reduce our heating bill (and carbon footprint, of course).
So far, I've swapped our very old boiler for an A rated condenser boiler, stuck thermostats on all our radiators, had cavity wall insulation put in, draught proofed the house, and we already have double glazing throughout.
All we've got left is the loft insulation and I'm quite close to sorting that one out. That could save us up to £200 a year.
Next stop: Generating our own heating?
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