Its gone crazy now recently. Seems electricity companies hedged their cost and now passing on astronomical prices to us. In my country now a unit of electricity is 0.4444c !! Got my latest bill for last two months... Standing Charge 61 days at €0.59 per day €35.99 844 Units at €0.4444 per Unit €375.07 VAT at 9% Total transactions for this period €448.05 Paying almost €450 every two months for electricity alone is crazy... and VAT will be going back to 13% I hear. And the sickening thing is the gas bill has gone up similarly. Basically its 2 units per euro now. I think the Americans / Canadians get about 5 units per dollar. I work from home so electricity and heating has to be on most of day now, and the main gaming PC is also my work PC. I can see two plugs in the office here with usage meters attached (there are other things plugged in not metered!) show the network using 300W continually while idling. That's at least 7 hours a day. I don't know what to do about it. EDIT: just got gas bill for same period... m3/ft3 * Conv.Factor = Units (kWh) 217m3 @ 11.5740 = 2512 kwh = €392 So that's about €840 (894 USD) for two months of electricty and gas - I live in a 1000sq/ft 3-bed duplex apartment - not a mansion!
What's the best site to compare consumer prices? This one seems to have recent data, but no clue how valid those numbers are: https://euenergy.live/
Here in the UK lekky and gas prices have been insane now since last year, and next month they are going up again.... Since last year..... Lekky vari tarrif 0.38 pkh Standing charge 0.59p And next month lekky is supposed to be going up to 0.48pkw and standing charge to 0.68p, and these are not the top tarrif prices because if you have a pre-paid meter these tarrifs are even higher......it is utter insanity. But on a positive the lekky and gas companies are making billions more profit ever quarter, so we do not need to worry about their shareholders going cold and hungry. Lol
The prices started to rise for me around Oct 2021 when Ukraine was still thought of as the most corrupt country in Europe and talk of the Azov regiment got you banned from social media. My standing charge doubled overnight. Theres no blaming standing charges on the war in Ukraine or wholesale gas prices is there. Being changed to a pre paid tariff is one of the catches of a smart meter, companies can change your meter to pre pay in a simple keyboard stroke from hundreds of miles away. Don't remember them including that in all those adverts and letters from the energy companies encouraging you to get one. My energy company recently emailed me to say that they are switching me to a payment plan with equal payments every month 'for my benefit' and if I don't like it, I am free to find a different supplier. My account has always been up to date via direct debit so this has nothing to do with debt or late payments.
my sympathies go out to all of you. this will drive real change (eventually). my experiences with this go back to the early 2000's when under a partisan scheme California de-regulated it's energy grid under the false claim that this would foster "competition" and lower costs. the result was the infamous Enron scandal with corporate criminals (literally, not a turn of phrase) maliciously manipulating the power supply leading to blackouts and rate hikes statewide - on top of which the two largest utilities had jaw dropping incompetence - like building a nuclear power plant with half of the layout 90 degrees from where it was supposed to be - in reinforced concrete specially made for nuke plants. so the rates became untenable and the political party (republican) that was behind the deregulation has never held statewide office again. and i went solar. but for you folks in Eurozone there will be "heads that roll" eventually but in the meantime i give you the badge of courage because you are giving the finger to Vlad
Big oil made almost $200 billion in 2022 as world faced energy crisis Profits almost tripled for the biggest oil and gas companies in western countries. This is the main reason for such high consumer prices.
Maybe it's time to re-nationalize energy companies here in the UK, after all they are vital to our lives. You can even make a national security argument.
the petro market is totally bizarre because having such a large "spot" market means that anything that can affect the mind even superstition, but especially anxiety has a direct bearing on what the consumer actually pays. and the "futures" market is gambling the cost will go up. i'm not a fan of nationalization but i am an admirer of stiff regulations especially in financial markets. tbh, the other half of the petro market is engineering so they're well familiar with boundaries.
Its already on balanced and the X570 based 5950X and 4080 are already way more power efficient than older hardware. Not really any way to decrease more. And I mean I'd hate to see what the power number is when doing 144FPS gaming... The other problem i have is the son got a new PC from me for Christmas (Ryzen 3900X, 3070 GPU) so now during gaming sessions when he is here that is another full whack of days of electricity on another PC in house!
The future's market for gas in Europe is now as low, as it was before the war. The only reason for prices to continue so high is complete greed from oil and gas companies. And European governments are useless at regulating such an important market for the economy.
Yeah I mean if you go out and look at your meter and see how fast 1 unit spins around... that is another 50p/50c every time at least now!
Not sure what that site shows - €/MWh - megawatt hours? That's industrial pricing isn't it. Consumers get charged more for much smaller KILOWATT hours
When in idle, my whole system draws 56W from the wall. CPU package power hovers around 8.5W. Really nice results.
Yes I was told ages ago by electricity/gas company reps that come to door to make you swap to their company that I should stick to old-fashioned dumb pricing - they said NEVER change to the new "smart" plans - said they are ripoff and once you switch they will never let you back on old plans. New plans end up costing you more money in the end they said.
We see the consequences, but not the causes. And before anyone jumps in to state who is the villain, hold on. It is not what you been told. Anyone with some memory and a good grasp on history, should by now apply the ancient and always reliable "Cui Bono?" logic and the answers are...the opposite what you been told by mass media. Without names or political orientation, think (for real) who could benefit of sale of GLP and natural gas. Oh wait, the pipe was blown to smithereens! Who could that be? Here in Spain, people should be outraged, furious and rightfully so. It the country with the must daylight, Sun solar plants are not where they should be. For years, people were "fined" for installing their solar panels. Even today, situation is not easy peasy. Burocracy, laws and taxes are the biggest barriers. The nuclear plants were closed because burning fuel is more "safe" and money grubbing lobbyist "told so". I use my laptop 90% of the time instead of my main computer, just for not wasting energy. And I am saddened that we still don't have solar power tapped as we should.
Thats not nice, unfortunate. We have one bonus in the UK, only 5% VAT on gas and electric, I didnt realise you paid 9% over the river. Despite our costs being a bit lower than yours atm, next month prices go up 20%. We've now got a couple of nuclear reactors in progress but its going to be some time before they come online. One City council has made their own private solar array which they use to charge their vehicles and run services without the current cost burdens. This should be what they all do considering from 2030 the only new vehicles allowed to be sold here will be electric, but so much money is wasted instead. And we are NOWHERE NEAR ready with the amount of charging stations nor fast chargers, nor chargers that actually work! That deadline will need to be shifted.
Well the sickening thing - and this is more of the "corporate criminals" you mention - is that the actual cost of gas/electricity has since dropped back to normal levels, but,... the way the local electricity/gas companies buy it is done using the whole stock market system of futures and setting a price now basically that you agree to pay for the next year/two years at a fixed price. So they are gambling that the price will go up, and they are buying now at a fixed price... but now since real prices went down, they are stuck paying at an astronomical price - and so they are passing on this frack-up to consumers to pay it for next years... so the crowd who produce and sell the gas/electricity (the russians?) are still winning big time as we are now all paying them way more than we should have been, because some corporate suits in power companies ****** up and set a contracted fixed futures buy price (or whatever its called) to pay... and their mistake is passed onto poor consumers as usual
