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Firedog
Super User
Super User
September 17, 2026

Price-cap increase 1 October 2026

  • September 17, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 10 views

Everyone on a Standard Variable Tariff, like OVO's Simpler energy, will have been warned to expect an increase on 1 October and again on 1 January 2027. Not everyone will have checked to see just how the increase affects them.

OVO's rates usually stick pretty close to the price cap, so the official tables are a good guide. They're on this gov.uk page - it's large and quite complicated, so it takes a few moments to work out what's what and how to find it: 
Energy price cap unit rates and standing charges | Ofgem 

Non-gas households only have to bother about the electricity prices. This is what the tables say for me in the East Midlands:

Figures in the tables include VAT.
In July-September 2026, VAT is 5%. In October 2026-March 2027, VAT is zero.

Using the Future Annual Consumption estimate from the Plan page, we can work out the annual cost before and after 1 October:

Before: 
1155 kWh x 23.55 p/kWh = £272
  365 days x 53.05 p/day = £194
Total:                                     £466

After:
1155 kWh x 24.05 p/kWh = £278
  365 days x 53.05 p/day = £186
Total:                                     £464

So my estimated annual cost actually goes down by an insignificant £2 inc. VAT as a result of the price-cap increase and zero-rating VAT.

This may be encouraging for customers in a similar situation. It could well be that it’s a completely different, and less cheerful, story when we repeat the exercise at the end of November, when we know what the price cap will be from 1 January 2027.   
  


Moral of the story: Do your own sums!
  

 

1 reply

Abby_OVO
Community Manager
Community Manager
September 18, 2026

Hey ​@Firedog 

 

Everything's so volatile at the moment it's so hard to tell what the best option is as it’s always changing and very hard to predict. I recently chose to fix in, I’m hoping that'll be for the best thing in the long run. Tariffs are a difficult thing to navigate of late, especially when different things work for different folk. 

 

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what really happens in the lead up to the next change in January.

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