Take your Gas and Electricity meter readings today 31 March – prices increase from 1st April

Just got this email from Lewisham (not sure of the Distribution List, so I thought it might be useful to share). It’s especially relevant if you don’t have a Smart Meter.

Lewisham council are advising residents to take meter readings on 31 March 2022, before the gas and electricity prices go up.
The energy price cap will increase from 1 April, with most gas customers being affected. This means that if you are on a default tariff, paying by direct debit, you are likely to see an increase of around £693 over the year in your energy bills. The increase is caused by a record rise in world gas prices over the last 6 months.

Incidentally, curious to see what rates people are getting: I saw on the news prices are up 54%, yet Bulb sent me this:

We’re increasing our electricity unit rate from 20.763p to 29.632p per kWh and electricity standing charge from 23.296p to 32.141p per day.
We’re increasing our gas unit rate from 4.186p to 7.517p per kWh and standing charge from 26.112p to 27.219p per day.

Gas looks more like 80% to me.

Check first! Not all suppliers are increasing prices tomorrow. Mine (Ecotricity) increases on April 22nd so they suggest you take the reading then if you don’t have a smart meter. One presumes those with smart meters will have the reading taken automatically.

I’m unclear on what happens to those most likely to be hit hardest with PAYG meters. Is the tariff applied when you load the meter or when you use the power? Hence is it worth loading all you can before the increase?

I think it’s more of a precaution. I did read a thread elsewhere that the modelling is pretty good now (accounting for temperature, and hence demand) and there’s no need to panic. Yes if you have a smart meter then it should be fine, although I’ve heard of smart meters being incompatible with new suppliers if your old one has gone under so people have no readings being sent over. The fear is if you have 1 month of ‘cold’ usage and 1 month warm using less at the new tariff they will average out the 2 months and end up paying more - as I said the claim is the demand models will take this into account.

Either way, no harm in taking a snapshot. Good point about checking the switch dates by supplier.

How look what you’ve done @clausy !

Good stuff, hopefully means quite a few people will save some money. I hope as long as you have a photo, you should be able to submit a reading tomorrow from point X ie today, and assume companies will honour this if their sites have crashed today so that it was not possible to submit.