Following the move by British Gas to cut its prices (an average of 7%), many of the leading energy suppliers have all announced similar drops.

Npower has slashed gas prices by some 7%, but reports suggest that these cuts do not apply to its tariffs online. It’s reckoned that around two million homes will get the benefit of the drop by the end of March, 2010, but those customers who are on the standard tariff (and that’s just shy of four million customers) won’t see any major change at all.

But Npower say the reason for not introducing a drop across all its prices is due to the competitive nature of its existing price points.

As to estimates how much Npower customers will save, it’s calculated that those taking only gas from Npower will benefit from around £60 a year and for those taking both gas and electricity, the saving will be around £50.

Npower said on their website:
“We are able to reduce our prices now as the cost of the gas that npower purchased in the past can now be used in today’s prices. We are now cheaper than British Gas for gas on a national average basis of all payment methods at an average consumption level of 20,500 kWh.”

Other gas suppliers weren’t far behind, with Eon saying that its prices will fall by 6% by the end of March, 2009. Good new says Eon which calculates that for it’s customers on its standard tariff and paying by direct debit, the yearly saving will be £42 a year, although cynics suggest that Eon had hiked its prices so much over the last couple of years, that its cost of gas will be a lot higher than it was at the start of 2008.

Scottish and Southern Energy’s price drops range from 4% to 9% and much depends on what type of deal the customer has, but there was no drop in electricity prices. So those with dual and electricity deals will see their bills cut by around 4% and those with single gas deals will get a 7% drop. The ones benefiting from the bigger 9% drop are those using pre-payment meters.

Although obviously good news for customers of the energy companies, consumer groups have described the reductions as miserly and warn that prices could rise quickly again towards the end of 2010.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

You can quickly check the latest energy prices and easily switch suppliers with our comparison tool here >>>

Despite the recent snow and ice, and a near grounding halt of the country due to the horrendous weather, the team at the npower owned and operated Tilbury Power Station in Essex have managed to cope with the increased demand for electricity.

Tilbury is a coal-fired power station – not the favourite type of the green lobby of course – and had to bring all three of its units into operation in order to handle the evening peak load.

Station manager Nigel Staves explained:
“When we were informed of the expected snow storms we put our plans into place to ensure that all essential workers were able to get into work. There are no problems with power generation and although we have obviously seen a rise in demand the situation is well under control.

“Tilbury Power Station has good supplies of coal and we have contingency plans in place to ensure that all other vital supplies to the power station are not affected by the poor weather. Weather like this shows the need for a balance of fuel supplies for generating electricity across the UK. Demand is high at the moment but within the levels anticipated during the winter months and Tilbury station is playing a major part in keeping households and businesses warm throughout the region.”

Ironically it’s not the increased demand for power, or coal supplies that cause the true problems for stations like Tilbury, it’s more about staff having to fight their way through snow drifts, battle along icy roads and keep their cars on the road in order to get to work. And the power station has to be manned 24/7, including Christmas.

And it’s a good job they do, bearing in mind that Tilbury produces some 1,063 Mega Watts of electricity, which is enough to power some 80% of Essex, around 1.4 million people.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

npower have introduced free home energy monitors for new customers. This customer incentive is available for all new Go Fix customers but is not available for signups to npower Juice green energy.

Switch energy provider to npower to claim your FREE Home Energy Monitor:

Recommended retail price: £39.99

Home Energy Monitors are estimated by the Department of Energy and Climate Change to help save up to 15% on your fuel bills.

Features of the Home Energy Monitor are:

• Check and monitor how much energy you are using in real time
• See what your electricity is costing you in Pounds and Pence
• See an instant response when you turn on an appliance – how much energy are your appliances using?
• Compare your usage from one day to the next

How to claim your Home Energy Monitor:
Switch your energy supply to npower online – once your energy supply with npower commences, you will be sent an email to which you’ll need to respond and confirm that you still want to receive your FREE energy monitor.

<< Click here to switch energy supplier to nPower and get your FREE monitor >>

Subject to terms and conditions:
† Maximum of 1 monitor per household. Offer to residents of Great Britain only (not Northern Ireland). This offer is subject to availability. Monitors will be distributed on a first come first served basis. There will be no alternative or cash offer. You will be sent an email once your supply with npower commences to which you will need to respond and confirm that you still wish to receive this offer. Your personal details will be used for cross checking for Ofgem compliance and may be used for marketing purposes. By accepting this npower home energy monitor you agree to receive survey’s from us about your usage of the device.

Article by Alan Potts
 

Two villages owned by the National Trust are about to be helped in a project funded by nPower to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The community led project is similar to the Government’s Low Carbon Community Challenge. It is designed to show how major energy efficiency improvements are achievable in homes of any age – not just modern buildings – with savings possible from the biggest mansion to the average family house.

nPower is the National Trust’s energy partner and the £600,000 project is being trialled at the villages of Coleshill in Oxfordshire and the Wallington Estate in Northumberland. Both are owned by the National Trust and in all, involves 62 houses at Coleshill and 73 cottages and 14 farms at Wallington, with properties dating from the 1850s and 1750s respectively.

Each village will make the decision as to what measures to take to reduce their carbon footprints with the added incentive of making savings to their energy bills.

The focus for residents at Coleshill was to initially find out their current energy consumption and carbon emissions as a starting point so that any success could be measured. It was discovered that they were slightly higher than the national average of 6.15 tonnes, coming in at 7.57 tonnes of CO2 every year.

In Wallington, they equated to an average of 9.5 tonnes of CO2 per property per year and the difference over the Coleshill residents is said to be because like a third of all rural areas in the UK, Wallington is off the gas network which means they have to rely on carbon-intensive oil and electricity for heating. This pushes up carbon levels as well as the bills.

Celia Robbins, the National Trust’s project manager at Wallington, said: “By introducing our energy efficiency measures and helping people understand their energy use we hope to make a real difference to both people’s pockets and to the environment.

“Installing sheep’s wool loft insulation and improving the efficiency of off-grid electricity generation will reduce Wallington’s carbon footprint by more than 10%.

“On advice from nPower’s energy advisor, we are also encouraging residents to monitor their electricity with a Smart Meter n which shows how much any appliance uses every six seconds. Using the display can be quite a revelation because although electricity is invisible this helps people see exactly how much they use and the associated costs.”

Guest Article by Neil Camp

At the beginning of February 09, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released figures that indicate the major energy providers of Europe have increased the energy prices in the UK much more than they have in their home countries over the course of the last year. This means that where we have seen energy inflation figures of over 12%, other European countries have actually seen their prices fall and there doesn’t seem to be a lot we can do about it.

Few people know that most of the biggest UK energy providers are foreign companies and that British Gas and Scottish & Southern Energy are the only UK registered energy providers around. For example, nPower and E.on are German companies, EDF is French and Scottish Power is Spanish and all of these European countries have seen their energy prices fall over the last 12 months. Figures show that with regards to energy prices, Germany saw cuts of nearly 1%, France of 6.5% and Spain over 7% in the same time period that we saw increases of over 12%.

Strangely though, the wholesale price of gas has fallen by over 40% since the middle of last summer but it is only now that we in the UK are beginning to see cuts in our energy prices – and in some cases this is only because British Gas and Scottish & Southern Energy have announced their price cuts. Recently, British Gas pledged to reduce their prices by 10% and as a result a number of the other large providers have followed suit. The question is though, would the German, French and Spanish companies have introduced similar cuts had British Gas done nothing?

Many experts say no and that the European companies would have continued to charge high energy prices in the UK so that they could keep the prices low within their own countries. They also say that is was simply the competition with the UK suppliers that spurred them into action but who knows what their intentions were in the long run – we should just be happy that they are starting to bring our prices back down.

Saying all this though, it seems that the figures are a little misleading and that we in the UK actually pay less for our energy than the rest of Europe and even with the inflation we still pay less. This is neither here nor there though and it makes you wonder what we could be paying if we had seen the same price cuts as the countries mentioned above. Most of the big energy suppliers have now announced their price cuts to the general population and over the course of the next year everyone should start to see savings, but the question remains – how much could we have saved by now if we’d seen the same degree of price cuts as everyone else in Western Europe last year?

Guest Article by Clare Lynock