Some energy, yesterday

Four of the ‘big six’ energy suppliers are in ‘big trouble’ with industry regulator Ofgem following mis-selling allegations and they could face ‘big punishments’ – but they probably won’t, obviously.

The face-to-face and telephone sales tactics of Npower, Scottish Power, Scottish and Southern Energy, and EDF Energy are to be investigated amid claims that some customers are finding themselves worse off after switching energy suppliers, possibly due to waffle, bollocks and mumbo jumbo.

New rules regarding sales were introduced at the end of last year, stating that potential customers must receive an estimate before a face-to-face sale is completed and that a comparison between their current and offered deal is provided. It has been alleged that this new code is not being fully adhered to. We stand amazed.

Following the conclusion of the Ofgem their CEOs could face one of the following punishments…

(a) Being wrapped up in a windsock and fired out of a cannon into the side of a shipping container.

(b) Being made to dress up as a Victorian prostitute before plying their ‘trade’ outside Millwall FC’s ground on a match day.

(c) Have their arms and legs surgically fused together before being dropped into a vat of hot tea.

(d) None of the above

In truth, it’s probably going to be (d) and they’ll probably end up with a warning or a fine that won’t actually be noticed thanks to their gargantuan profits. And life will go on pretty much the same as it was before…

Lord Sun, yesterday

We’re all keen on using alternative sources of energy that won’t kill penguins, and solar power seems to be becoming increasingly popular, what with Lord Sun being our best friend and that.

As a result, there’s been an increasing number of deals on the market of late, with companies offering free solar panels in exchange for a slice of the money saved against regular, penguin-killing energy bills.

But it seems that the deals aren’t all that they’re cracked up to and that you might be better off funding the purchase and installation of the solar panels yourself rather than being dazzled by the word ‘free’.

The Guardian report that: “under the “free solar” model, a homeowner would save in the region of £2,750 on energy bills over 25 years, the length of the tariff offer. By paying for their own panels with a loan at 7.7% interest repaid over 10 years and earning income from the feed-in tariff, they could save around £6,506 over the same period.”

Additionally, Consumer Focus have published a lengthy checklist of 24 questions that anyone planning to install solar heating should probably be asking, including ‘If a giant comes along and puts his thumb on my solar panel, will my telly stop working?’

Ah hang on, we’ve just checked. That isn’t one of the questions. Sorry.

Some gas, yesterday.

If you’re a British Gas customer who felt the pinch during the now-forgotten Big Freeze of last winter, you might be delighted to learn that the money you paid for the extra heating you needed in order to survive has all been counted up and THERE’S LOADS OF IT!

British Gas has announced operating profits of £585 million for the first half of 2010, a rise of 98%. But it’s all ‘nice’ profit though – the company have been at pains to point out that they cut their prices three times in the past year by a total of 17%. Their reasoning is that these cuts attracted scores of new customers who were dazzled by the amazing tariffs on offer.

Are you a British Gas customer? Is their reasoning an accurate description of the state of things as far as you are concerned? Talk to us in the box below.

Meanwhile, The Daily Mash have got their own take on the plight of British Gas…

Put your hand up if you’ve had one of those cards from your postman, telling you that he had a package that wouldn’t fit through your letterbox and has bunged it off to the local delivery office.

Now put your other hand up if you’ve subsequently made the trek to the aforementioned delivery office only to find that the package in question is a free energy-saving lightbulb, sent to you as a special treat by your energy supplier. Hmm, a few hands in the air we see (we don’t really – that would be impossible… or would it?)

An old-fashioned light bulb yesterday. Piss off old-fashioned light bulb!

It’s a deeply frustrating event and one that is responsible for two in every five cases of self-elbow-chewing in the UK (or so we imagine). You should try not to focus on the time and energy expended in getting to the delivery office and back though – you’ve just got a free lightbulb.

Unfortunately though, it seems that most of us don’t actually use the sodding things, and research by the Energy Saving Trust suggests that 60 percent of the 224 million energy-saving bulbs dispatched over the past two years haven’t been used yet.

The deluge of unwanted bulbs was at its worst at the end of last year – new Ofgem rules state that from January 1^st, bulbs can only be sent out to householders who have requested them.

But it seems that the bombardment of bulbs is nothing more than an exploitation of the regulations as energy companies try to get away with the cheapest and easiest methods of being seen to be saving energy.

Although they’ve sent out 224 million energy saving bulbs, government target figures for the period stood at just 110 million. Meanwhile, targets for domestic cavity wall insulation installations were 2.9 million homes – according to Ofgem, less than one million homes have been done to date.

Energy suppliers – screwing their customers in increasingly imaginative array of ways. It’s almost admirable if it didn’t suck so hard.

The sun - literally spunking money at us

In the week when doomsayers predicted that the cost of gas and electricity would shortly rise to a level where it would be cheaper to have liquid platinum piped into your house instead, the government have launched a solar power initiative that could save the lives of millions of penguins and make you some hard cash.

From 1^st April, the government will pay new users of solar power for the electricity they generate, even if they use all of it themselves. Obviously, you’ll need an initial outlay for the photovolatiac (PV) solar panels (between £10k-£12k) and a south-facing, obstruction-free roof.

But after that, you’ll be paid 41.3p per kilowatt hour generated, which the government reckon will earn you as much as £900 in payouts, not to mention a saving on your regular bills of about £140. Better still, the payments will be guaranteed for the next 25 years and will be linked to inflation.

Early adopters who have already installed PV panels will also be rewarded, but at a lower rate. As the clever man in The Guardian who we’ve sourced the story from says: “If the government offered to pay you £1,000 a year for the next 25 years, in return for an up-front investment of £12,500, you’d snap it up in a second.” And that, in a nutshell, subject to many, many boxes that you’ll need to tick first, is what you could be getting.

It seems the sun has got his hat on. Hip hip hip hooray! Or something.

We keep having these wars and still we’re no closer to getting the Middle East to play nice and give us good price head. We’ve bribed and bombed and now the bloody stuff is running out.

Consarnit!

Well, whilst everyone bites their nails and tries to make some trees die quicker so we can go hill milking for the black stuff, some smart cookies are looking elsewhere for our power. As such, Europe may be getting energy from solar power raped sourced from the Sahara.

A $400bn (£240bn) plan for such a thing moved a step closer to reality today with the formation of a consortium of 12 companies to carry out the work.

The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) aims to provide 15% of Europe’s electricity by 2050 or earlier via power lines stretching across the desert and Mediterranean sea. The German-led consortium was brought together by Munich Re and consists of some of country’s biggest engineering and power companies, including Siemens, E.ON, ABB and Deutsche Bank.

You’ll agree that the last sentence may have been the most moving, powerful and riveting paragraphs in the history of the English language.

Here’s the science. The solar technology involved is known as concentrated solar power (CSP). What happens here is, that mirrors are used to concentrate the sun’s rays on a fluid container. The super-heated liquid then drives turbines and makes electrickery!

Desertec is being fawned at by many, including German coalition government of Angela Merkel. Everyone is very giddy because it means the dependency on oil and Russian gas supplies could diminish. Of course, North African governments are going to be up for it as well because it means loads of money.

So that’s the future of our children sorted then… unless we end up going to war with Algeria and Chad or something.

[Guardian]

'Hi. I'm still alive thanks to my friends at Google.'

Google have gotten all ‘philanthropic’ on our asses today with the UK launch of their new ‘PowerMeter’ electricity consumption contraption/service that we previewed earlier in the year. They claim they’re doing it save the planet and all of its innocent dying penguins, but doubts have been expressed over whether its just another way for them to clutch our personal data into their big Googly bosom. Who knows?

It works like this – the citizen (you for example) buys a self-installable AlertMe Energy kit and subscription (£69.00 for the hardware and then £2.99 per month). Then, hey presto, they can keep tabs on their energy consumption data on PowerMeter, as part of their iGoogle home page.

A link-up with the new breed of smart meters is also on its way. Research has shown that household energy bills fall by around 10% whenever consumers have more of a grasp on their energy use. Which is an enormous boon, and we’re always on the look out for enormous boons.

Google – saving the lives of penguins since 2009.

Some gas, yesterday

By 2016, we’ll probably all be dead. If we’re not, we’ll wish we were. The reason? By then, fuel bills will probably have risen by 60% and we’ll be paying an average of around £2,000 a year just to be able to keep warm and have a bit of light. Grim.

The average annual fuel bill right now is £1,247 but a study by the doom merchants at Ofgem predicts that in seven years time, it will be £1,995. That’s probably almost as TV’s sexy consumer duchess Anne Robinson spends on hairstyles in a month.

Mark Todd, a director of Energyhelpline, the switching service, said: “A rise of 60 percent is credible, unfortunately, especially for electricity. A lot of generating plant is about to be replaced with greener technology.” Yeah, he’s right. We , the humble consumer should have to pay for all of that new technology because none of the energy suppliers have been making any money; in fact most of them just about breaking even. OH NO, HANG ON, THEY’VE ACTUALLY BEEN MAKING GARGANTUAN PROFITS! The steaming bastards.

So, there you go folks. In a nutshell, you’re going to need to think of a few sly ways of keeping warm by 2016. Any thoughts? We’re going to breed glowworms for light and for heat we’ll invest in a few hundred sheepskin rugs and fashion a range of all-over body suits out of them. How about you?

[Telegraph]

Some energy, yesterday

As summer begins to fade away, our thoughts turn to its mortal enemy, winter, and more specifically, how the hell are we going to afford to heat the house during the chillier months.

Despite a recent drop in the wholesale cost of energy, there has been no significant price cuts for gas and electricity users over the past few months. Now the chief executive of energy watchdog Ofgem has written an open letter to the big six UK domestic suppliers, basically urging them to pull their collective finger out and cut their tariffs.

Ofgem’s Alistair Buchanan roared that wholesale costs were expected to drop further, hissing: “In a strong competitive market, we would expect prices to respond to such falls.

He went on to growl: “You will be familiar with these trends and also aware of some public dissatisfaction with suppliers’ response so far to wholesale price reductions.”

True to form, the energy suppliers have covered their ears and gone ‘Na na na na na na na na!’ hoping the fuss will all go away. Garry Felgate, chief executive of the Energy Retail Association (ERA), which represents the suppliers, said: “The suppliers need no reminding of the importance of pricing to customers.”

“We have seen energy prices falling for the vast majority of customers this year. Despite these falls the wholesale market still remains volatile and a challenge for energy suppliers coming up to the winter. Customers have been protected from the massive rises in wholesale prices last year, price rises that were not fully passed on at the time.”

We should all stop complaining. Seems like they’re doing us all a favour really. Sorry, energy men. Have some more pensioners’ money.

Smart energy meters then. Plans are that we’ll all have them by 2020, they’ll make billing 100% accurate and they’ll save us a load of money. A total of £36.75 million, which is an average of… £1.43 per household per year to be precise. Oh.

The energy suppliers will save money too, as they’ll no longer have to employ meter readers or staff to deal with billing disputes. They’ll save a total of £306 million a year. Wowzers!

So obviously, the energy suppliers will be churning those savings into funding the roll-out of the smart meters, right? Wrong. According to the government’s plans, we’ll be paying for it – us, the consumer, the lucky sods who are saving a poxy £1.43 a year.

Which? energy campaigner, Dr Fiona Cochrane, says: “We don’t see how the Government can justify asking consumers to pay for something that will save energy companies hundreds of millions a year, while the average household will make only minimal savings.”

True dat. If you’re as irate about this as we are, you CAN do something about it. Throw your opinions on this scam into the consultation pot by emailing the government at smartmetering@decc.gsi.gov.uk before Monday 3rd August. Please state if you are an individual or representing the views of an organisation so that your voice can be properly heard. Don’t let them get away with it.

[Which?]