Many using pre-payment meters to budget despite high cost
October 15, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Despite the fact that we are always being told that pre-payment meters are the most expensive way of paying for our energy, a staggering 5.9 million consumers are still using them. This has increased by 1.2 million in the last ten years but the good news is that there was a movement away from them last year, with more than 200,000 of us changing to another method.
Only about 1 million of us are using pre-payment meters to repay a debt, which means that almost 5 million of us are paying excessive amounts for no good reason. According to Ofgem, many of us think that meters are a good way of budgeting but this is a bad move and should, according to the regulator, only be used as a last resort.
Meters are commonly used by those on low income who are the very group that should be taking advantage of the best deals they can find. Although many of the good deals are often only available online and require a bank account to pay by direct debit, savings of almost £250 are there for the taking.
Even if you are on a meter, so long as you are in credit, it is possible to change provider which may well save up to £138 a year. Whilst some consumers have no choice, there are others who are merely unwilling to go to the trouble of changing, despite the fact that 90% of those surveyed by Which? Magazine reported that it had been quick and easy to do so.
The postcode lottery of fuel bills
October 10, 2008 at 1:59 am
The postcode lottery has, for some time now, been a term bandied about in relation to the availability of healthcare or the price of insurance premiums. Now, however, it seems that the size of our fuel bills is largely dependent on where we live too.
Research carried out by MoneyExpert.com has revealed that householders in the South East of England are paying an annual amount of £955, over a hundred pounds more than the £851 spent by those in the North East and £92 more than those in the South West, whilst Londoners spend £888 a year.
However, perhaps southerners are not so hard done by after all when salaries are taken into account. They spend on average 3.38% of their income on gas and electricity, compared to 4.28% in the North East, which is the highest percentage in the UK.
The director of MoneyExpert.com, Sean Gardner, says he was shocked by the findings. Although he had expected some anomalies to be thrown up, the regional variation is far greater than expected, with a 12% difference between the highest and the lowest regions.
Gas prices have risen by 52% this year and electricity by 28% so it is perhaps surprising to find that 11% of people surveyed by moneysupermarket.com said that they would never change supplier, regardless of the potential savings which could be made.
Recent research shows that some of us could save almost £500 by changing our supplier and although around half of us have never switched, this could be about to change.
Methane gas can now be stored as a solid
October 1, 2008 at 10:57 am
The storage of methane gas is often a difficult process to get right. For many years methane has been a frustratingly expensive alternative to fossil fuels such as oil and coal, but things might soon be about to change thanks to some groundbreaking work by chemists at Liverpool University.
Methane is a compound consisting of one carbon and four hydrogen atoms and is locked within ice crystals under the seas, especially around the North Pole. However, due to temperatures being so low and pressures being so high in such places, it’s very hard to extract the methane.
In an age when the world should be looking for alternative sources of fuel, methane hasn’t received the press coverage it deserves. If you hold a lit match to the methane that evaporates from the ice, then you’ll see a large blue flame that proves just how rich in energy it is. To extract the gas from the ice is a long and very expensive process, which ironically also requires a vast amount of energy. The new method turns the gas into a solid white powder and is vastly more efficient.
The process might sound too simple to be true, but then all the best ideas are. An everyday household blender was used by the professors at Liverpool. They mixed the methane gas with dry water (which is a concoction of normal water and silica, which gives the water a greater surface area) and the methane gas is absorbed onto it.
After only half an hour you could turn as much as a litre of methane gas into only 6 grammes of the special white powder. It could be a breakthrough in the world of chemical engineering. The plan isn’t to stop with methane but possibly repeat the process with carbon dioxide too, which would be even more groundbreaking and helpful to the environment.
