Wow, this is even more of a flexible situation than I thought.

I just checked the newly offered ‘fixed loyalty’ tariff and entered the new figures into my spreadsheet calculation, then went back to check something and the figures being offered had already changed in that 5 minutes.

I still can’t work out just why OVO estimate my new DDs on Fixed Loyalty would be around £193 a month though when I calculate them at around £134?
That’s a £700+ a year difference.

The only explantion for that could be the anual usage figures, and I am using the usage they have on the website - so they must be using something else. (Something that is much higher than my actual usage).

Edit- I believe that I have found it.
In a recent email about the Jan price increases they have my anual gas usage as 31485 Kwh, on the website gas usage for 2023 is currently 8444 kWh, almost a 4x difference.

TBH though it’s still not the full story as if I put 31485 kWh for gas into my calcs then the DD would be around £274 a month.
Just divide the £2441.95 estimated for gas shown here by 12 to see what I mean.

Where that 31485 kWh is coming from I have no idea, but it could explain why they have constantly been trying to set my DDs too high.

email:

Account on website:

Oh dear, another fictional FAC figure. 

If you visit ovoenergy.com and click the Fix now button, you should be able to enter your actual usage figures along with the other details, leading to a more meaningful quote. Do you see the same (or similar) Loyalty tariffs as you got in the email? 

As I wrote earlier, I wouldn’t recommend this route to change your plan, but at least you should get a better idea of what the change might involve.

Well I’ve now found another, and quite different FAC figure on the Plan page of my account. (Thanks @Jeffus)

I’ve decided that I am going to get my gas reading up to date (the electricity is smart metered), then fix tomorrow, using the account renewals page, and then sort out the incorrect FAC’s and subsequently inflated DD before the first one is due in January.

As I noted above the Fixed Loyalty tariff has changed since I was first offered it, both unit rates and standing charges.Not great amounts but changed.
The original figures aren’t on the email just a link, but I had noted them at the time so that I could use them in calculations.
 

Cornwall Insight are calculating  a fall on 1st April currently. Am not surprised, as I mentioned yesterday a few posts up.

Of course you may still want to lock in for piece of mind.

This is the announcement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67772757

https://www.cornwall-insight.com/press/price-cap-predicted-to-fall-by-14-in-april/

The ofgem announcement will be on the 23rd Feb and the calculations period stops even earlier. The price cap is using wholesale data at the moment up to the end of the calculation period. From 16 November 2023 to 15 February 2024 .

As it gets closer to the end of the calculations period so the Cornwall Insight figure will get more accurate.

This is today's copy of the gas price I posted previously which is driving the fall in estimates

These are the latest announcement dates for the price cap next year

• 1 April to 30 June 2024 level, announced by 23 February 2024. Assessment period 16 November 2023 to 15 February 2024 

• 1 July to 30 September 2024 level, announced by 28 May 2024. Assessment period 16 February to 16 May 2024 

• 1 October to 31 December 2024 level, announced by 27 August 2024. Assessment period 17 May to 16 August 2024

@Firedog @Nukecad 

Have you thought about the EON Next Pledge tariff which will track 3% below the price cap?

No. I’m very much a ‘better the devil you know’ sort of bloke. I haven’t even looked to see how they manage standing charges. If the ‘pledge’ only applies to unit rates, then it would mean perhaps less than 2% below the price cap for me, or around £5 a year. That’s not worth the hassle of changing supplier.

For info - my December DD went in today and so I’ve just pressed the fix button and got shown this:

That £187 is way too high but I now have a month to argue it down to the £133/£134 that it should be.

Could you share your calculations that arrive at the figure of £133? And can you see where the £187 figure comes from?

@Firedog  A screenshot from my calculation spreadsheet is below.
I still can’t work out where they are getting the £187 from.
It must be the FAC for gas but I have no Idea what figure they are using, and they have different figures in different places.

Even after fixing last night the fun and games continues.

I’m currently not even sure just what rates I have fixed at - the figures given in the two emails I was sent are different to the figures currently on the ‘Plan’ page of my account.

I’m going to give things a few days to settle down before getting on to them to reduce the DD amount, I may leave it until the new year.

Beware of the VAT! The email figures include it, but the ones on the Plan page and bills don’t.

I haven’t looked at your calculations yet, but it would be a good idea to make sure that VAT is either included or excluded everywhere so you don’t end up comparing apples to goats.

Meanwhile, I dread to think that your gas FAC may have succumbed to the same fault that we’ve seen some other customers suffer: that the OVO system wrongly assumes that your gas usage is being measured in ft³ instead of m³. This would introduce an error with a factor of 2.83. Admittedly, this would bring your AQ in kWh down below what you expect, which is untraditional - any FAC is always overestimated in my experience. But still, worth checking just in case. Your latest bill might give a clue.

VAT - of course that makes the differences showing there. (Slaps head, why didn’t I think of that).

As for the FAC I don’t think it’s because of metric vs imperial, but I suppose that it is possible that they have it wrong in the FAC calculation and correct in the biling.
The billing has been fine, the metric volumes as metered convert to the stated kWh.

I do apreciate that they are always going to overestimate slightly, just to cover themselves, but it seems too much of an overestimation.
I also note that we do agree on the FAC for electricity so they aren’t overestimating there.

I now have until 20th Jan before the next DD is due and they haven’t actually emailed me yet with a figure for the new DD. (So there’s still time for them to get it right).

For info - my December DD went in today and so I’ve just pressed the fix button and got shown this:

That £187 is way too high but I now have a month to argue it down to the £133/£134 that it should be.

I’ve re-read that message that popped up after I fixed. (Glad I screenshotted it and posted it here).

I’d only concentrated on the bold £187 when it popped up, it does jump out at you, but it does also state there that they won’t change the current DD, and they haven’t done. (yet).
They have now enabled the button to for me to change the amount myself, that button wasn’t enabled for me before.

So my DD amount is still showing at the £150 that I have been paying.
I think that I’ll leave it there for now, even though I reckon that it’s higher than needed that extra will pay off my debit balance more quickly.

I believe that I can now do this, and it’s quite interesting.

If I ignore the posted OVO FAC for gas and instead use double my own estmated anual usage for gas, (ie 18400 instead of my 9200) then using the rates including VAT it calculates out as a required monthly DD of £186.92.
That’s close enough for me.

So it looks as if the OVO DD calculator might have an erroneous doubling in there for gas usage? Or is being fed a figure that is twice what it should be? Or even being fed the correct figure twice?
Difficult to be sure without seeing the actual algorithms being used, but as I say interesting.

My issue is the standing charge being a light user as i cant control it.

These are my % SC v unit costs (excl VAT)

20Jun/19 jul 

Elec  was  54.8%

Gas  was 692.7% !!!

20 Nov/19 dec bill 

Elec was 32.5%

Gas was 13.7%

Once my Dec/Jan bill comes in i will be able to see what my standing charge v unit costs are for a whole year. Will be interesting!

It makes obtaining my power move credit (since i started in Sep) all the more important which covers 46.5% of my standing charges when the credit was £10, and 69.8% with the current £15 which i should just about manage under the new winter target.

Power move plus i have only just made over 50p so far all the events so insignificant for a low user.

As to fixing i just dont know, because its the SC thats the impact more for me.

This was one of the main reasons why I chose to fix. When reputable prophets predicted an 8p/day increase in the standing charge for electricity on 1 April, I got my calculator out. The odd 0.05p/unit here or there makes little difference to low users like us, but an 8p hike in the SC means a guaranteed annual cost increase of ~£20. I suggest you do your own sums!

0.08*365=£29.20

just saying….

_______

It’s all theoretical to me, presumably due to being on a occult tariff

During the energy-price uncertainty, we’re not able to offer a fair priced fixed-rate plan. Our variable-rate Simpler Energy plan is the only one available at the moment. These prices are in line with Ofgem’s price cap.

~~~ 🥴 ~~~

Christmas came early, visibility poor, I’m afraid ...

You can see all current plans for your region, fuel type, meter type and payment method on this page: Our prices | OVO Energy

Little Christmas tip: three hyphens and Enter produces a horizontal rule in this editor.

The average electricity standing charge from 1st Jan is 53.35p

The average standing charge from 1st April according to the latest Cornwall estimate is 58p

58-53.35 = 4.65p a day if a consistent 58p

£16.97 for a year increase.

It wouldn't take much of a change following the standing charge consultation to overcome that sometime over the next 12 months.

The unit rate may be well be over 4p a unit less from 1st April based on current average estimates from Cornwall Insight. I assume even low energy users are using more than 1kWh a day

These are all averages, unit rates and standing charges vary by region

You trying to ruin Christmas for me? The new Cornwall prediction came out the day I fixed, so I’ve still got a few days to cool off in. Back to the drawing board.

For a start, Cornwall’s figures are heavily rounded, so we should really be comparing the earlier forecast - 60 or 61p - to the current 53, which is where the 8p increase I quoted arose. Second, do we know whether the threatened £16 bad payer levy is included in Cornwall’s assessments?

The forecast reduction in unit prices from the Q1 figures is quite dramatic - 28.62 to 24.09 to 22.56 - and would have a significant effect on bills as you point out. I know you’ve been expecting something of the sort, based on your scrutiny of forward wholesale prices. I’ll have to dig out the old slide rule and crunch the numbers again, but at first glance it would seem that SVT would trump a one-year fix based on my usage (~3kWh/day).

It is impossible to know for sure @Firedog 

The fix price gives piece of mind. That is not a bad thing. I am definitely not suggesting you should take a risk with the standard tariff 

We know the ofgem announcement on the £16 debt going on the unit rate rather than the standing charge was announced prior to the Cornwall Insight estimate.

The £16 debt and rounding is relatively small but not insignificant compared with the drop in wholesale prices currently for many people but not for low users.

Quite a lot could happen as a result of the standing charge review.

Of course a new government and ofgem could do something unexpected quickly. 

The main thing currently is what will happen to the wholesale price of gas between now and 15th Feb when the calculation period for the Q1 2024 period finishes. It has been volatile so Cornwall Insight may well be wrong particularly for Q2, Q3, Q4. This is the latest price.

You may simply decide to fix for piece of mind.

OK. I ran the numbers again with the latest CI predictions, with a bit of massaging. The rates in my part of the world tend to be about 95% of the national average, although the standing charge is probably a bit less than that. Anyway, using OVO’s SVT rates for Q1 and Cornwall’s predictions for Q2, Q3 and Q4, along with my own quarterly consumption figures for 2023 (including December 2022 instead of 2023), it looks as if the rates I fixed on would cost between £10 and £17 a year less than the SVT for the standing charge, but the fuel cost would be about £41 higher. I’m not happy with a fixed rate plan that could cost me £25-£30 more than the SVT and still saddle me with a £75 exit fee. 

I’ll be using your magic freephone number to cancel the fix later on in the week if webchat doesn’t work. Wish me luck! 

Predictions are just predictions - AKA ‘best guesses’ - you have just seen that they change, and CI could be predicting something else next week. (And certainly will be by April)

You make a decision and you fix or don’t fix, that’s your own particular guess/gamble, and then you see how it pans out.

I made my decision to fix, based on current /Januarys SVT vs the Fixed Rates offered, and will now stand by that decision.
Personally I don’t see the point in wavering now just because someone else’s guesses have changed.

That’s a confusing page. But I eventually whittled it down to see there are only two economy 10 tariffs on DB, which are both identical. So that explains why there is nothing to change to. I am stuck unless I want to change to a single tariff (which SSE said I could do, but I haven’t asked Ovo). I won’t do this yet, until I make my final decision about heating.

I’m fairly sure that CI’s guesses are closer to the truth than anything I could ever come up with. In particular, I think that their Q2 forecast for unit rates is likely to be close to whatever Ofgem settle on in just a few weeks’ time. My rationale for fixing was based on estimates that have changed significantly, and the new figures indicate that what might have been to my benefit before is no longer so advantageous. It’s a fairly safe rule that the most recent prophecy is more likely to be right than earlier ones. 

The last time I fixed my rates, for two years, it was just before the price cap went into orbit in 2021. That saved me an awful lot. Let’s see how we go over the next year.