ex-pats in Europe,is energy actually cheaper in European countries

We live on the southern most part of the Costa Blanca. Our last monthly electricity bill was €82. We have three tariffs in a twenty four hour period. Our electricity bills are much higher in the summer than any other time of the year. This is due to ceiling fans, which are constantly on and air conditioning.
The oven is rarely used in the summer. We live on salads.
However sometimes we can shower three or four times a day.
This also includes running a hot tub and small pool.
We have no mains gas. Bottled gas is used for the BBQ. Which is used most days.

Oopsadaisy1

Oldnproud you are on a variable rate so it will go up or down but the cap means it won’t go higher than whatever the cap is. Your old bill I assume was on your previous fixed rate.

Oops, my August bill overlapped both the period when I was still on the fixed rate, and a couple of months on the standard variable. The figures that I gave above were from the standard variable period, not the cheaper fixed tariff period.

Maybe I'm overlooking something, but I don't see why my unit prices / standing charge should have gone either up or down since then.

The fixed tariff rates showing on the August bill were set at the current price cap.
That cap has not changed since then, but the unit prices and standing charge showing on my account today are very different from those showing on that bill, and certainly not in line with the current cap - as far as I can work out, they are above it by a huge margin!

I will be checking with British Gas in the next few days, but in the meantime, I'm assuming that they have prematurely updated the tariff details to the new October ones.

Current electricity price in Ireland is around 43 cents per kWh. Not including standing charge. That would make Ireland one of the most expensive- no surprise!

Anyone got an answer to why uk are paying the most for our fuel??

Sorry Esspee - it let me read it and I don't have a subscription.

Try putting this into google:

"How do household energy bills compare across Europe?"

That's what the article is called.

Here's a graph.

Oldnproud you are on a variable rate so it will go up or down but the cap means it won’t go higher than whatever the cap is. Your old bill I assume was on your previous fixed rate.

The FT article is behind a paywall.

And here is an FT article which is very straightforward.

They have weighted average end-user prices to include distribution and taxes.

www.ft.com/content/57c66a89-b046-4c3e-a8aa-d9099bd4da20

Here is info from the end of last year and the chart that goes with it.

ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/e/ea/Electricity_prices_for_household_consumers%2C_second_half_2021_.png

I've checked my last bill, in August, see what Scottish Power were charging me then.

Unit price: 26.311p

Standing charge: 42.610p

So why the hell aren't they still showing these prices on my account, rather than the astronomical prices above?
That was an unnecessarily stressful start to the day!

Well, I've just had one hell of a shock.
I've just gone into my Scottish Power account to check what I'm paying now, which is supposed to be the standard variable capped price, but am being shown these figures:

(We are electricity only).

Unit price: 50.87p

Standing charge: 45.76p

That can't be right, surely?
I'm certain that those arent the figures they gave me a couple of months ago when our fixed tariff ended and we lapsed onto the standard variable. At that point, I did all the calculations so i could compare with available fixed tariffs, and also did a rough estimate of what we were likely to be paying in October based on the then-predicted cap increase (just before it rose from 60%, admittedly).

These rates showing on my account now sound more like the October cap figures to me!

I sure hope so ?

Is that a fixed rate that started about a year ago, infoman? It sounds very similar to a two-year fix that my DS signed up to back then.

I’m with Eon next in Scotland. We pay 49p per day standing charge plus 27p per KWh for electricity and 26p per day standing charge plus 4p per KWh for gas.

The standing charge amounts to half our daily usage at the moment. These prices are expected to double under Truss’s new capped tariff I understand after reading the Money Saving Expert explanation of the Conservatives recent response to the energy crisis. The power companies will be raking it in while future generations will be paying the exorbitant interest rates through their taxes for many, many years to come.

Our standing charge is 183€ per annum.

Don’t forget the standing charge infoman and many people are on far more than your rate for Electricity.

Sorry again, forgot to say this is France.

Sorry that should be per kwh!

Electricity is 17 cents per kw and overnight cheap rate is 12 cents.
Gas is far less common for domestic heating; we have bottled gas for cooking, probably about 60€ a year on average.