The standing charges cover a range of costs faced by suppliers. These include network costs for running and maintaining the system, the supplier of last resort scheme and the warm home discount scheme.

The supplier of last resort scheme makes up the main part of the increase in electricity standing charges as every household is having to pay for rescuing customers from failed suppliers.

Network energy reforms have also moved some charges that used to form part of the unit rate onto the standing charge.

According to https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/09/energy-bills-price-freeze-cost-of-living-government-liz-truss-/ the average standing charge for a duel fuel account is 46.36p per day for electricity and 28.49p per day for gas. These charges are set by the government now for the next two years from 1st October.

OVO has to do what it’s told so it’s not opportunism, though the amounts are more than your 37p per day, so that may be superseded.

Is it worth writing to OFGEM & an MP to complain about the high Standing Charges?

Why are they so high?

This has been discussed recently.

Firstly, this sort of thing is technically out of scope for your MP. You can find out more about what they will cover at https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/fymp/yaympenglish.pdf

If you write to your MP anyway despite this - and you are still entitled to try if you wish - there is a chance that your complaint will be rejected with a standard reply.

The Standing Charges are ultimately a business decision for each supplier to make, provided they stay within the new Energy Price Guarantee. They’re only so high now because:

• 30 suppliers collapsed last year, pushing the Supplier of Last Resort process to the limit
• Suppliers got walloped with tons of one-off or exceptional costs over the last year
• The cost of supplying energy has shot through the roof at the moment

Who can explain why we are paying standing charges?

https://www.comparethemarket.com/energy/content/what-is-energy-standing-charge/

https://www.moneysupermarket.com/gas-and-electricity/standing-charges-explained/

https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/guides/energy-standing-charges/

Hey @KGS,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community, 

@Jeffus has given some really helpful links here. Just wanted to add the following topics give some great explanations about why we pay standing charges: 

I have read quite a lot of the comments made about standing charges. Ovo’s charge is quite high compared to other suppliers to the market.

But a quick check with Utilita and Ebico (no standing charges) when looking at the whole - for my annual electricity consumption showed that Ovo was £50 less than Ebico and £130 less than Utilita.

The standing charge seems to be a way of providing some kind of baseline income to the providers. In my case it represents around 15% of total spend.

That said, many of the comments made in other discussion threads have simply asked for there to be transparency and personally I can see know reason why that should not be the case and ally suppliers should provide full disclosure as to how their standing charge is arrived at if they have one.