Interest in an Energy club?

[Andybol]

Dear EDFers and local business

I'm an energy and carbon expert and have been working on energy reduction projects and policy for around 10 years. Over the past few weeks we've seen a ramping up of energy prices amongst the big six providers which is making life a lot harder for both households and business.

I wondered whether there would be interest in pulling together a local energy club. Such a club may be able to share experience and ideas for energy reduction and provide some learning for people to take advantage of in order to reduce their energy bills. You never know we may be able to do some collective projects that save money for business (and if appropriate households)through employing energy savings techniques and products and using a local economy of scale approach.

I suspect there may be a lot of great ideas from locals that may benefit the wider community and help to take back a bit more control on energy costs.

If interested let me know.

Cheers

Andy

[dbboy]

Saving money on the cost of energy is a great idea, be it through insulation, draft proofing etc or switching suppliers.

To make real savings households need to switch away from the big six energy suppliers and go with one of the many smaller companies. I switched from a British Gas online tariff to one of the small companies online gas tariffs about 18 months ago and was surprised about the savings I am making. The cost of gas with the smaller supplier company per KWhr is still cheaper and will remain so with an expected 4% increase in the new year. By switching to this supplier you also get ?25 of your first bill by quoting a referring reference number.

I found the price of electricity is similar between the big six and smaller companies, you might save ?15 a year by switching, is it worth it for the aggravation??

The key to making savings though is by switching away from the big six energy suppliers for gas. They have millions of customers and shareholders, the smaller companies have a few hundred thousand of customers and want to build their businesses to compete, they do this by offering competitive tariffs and not having share holders but members. If you want to start saving money on your gas bill, join me in saving money as well and switching.

PM me and I'll give you details and a reference so you get ?25 of your first bill, I then also get ?25 of my next bill in 3 months time after you have switched.

As I've said already a few times, the key to saving money on your energy costs is to SWITCH, SWITCH, SWITCH.

[Andybol]

Cheers DDboy

Switching is pretty vital in a strategy to save money but so is energy savings. Don't forget that when switching you need to check whether tarrifs are fixed for a period and whether there's a cancellation charge for not staying for a fixed period. That all needs to be taken into account when assessing which supplier is best for you. Agree in principle with more independent suppliers as they tend to not have as many shareholders to please :D

However don't forget that longer term resilience to volatile energy prices can only really be done by managing your energy consumption. As a carbon footprinter I would be more than happy to do a free assessment of any businesses energy consumption and give you some tips on how to reduce waste energy use.

Similarly if we can scale this up through an energy club businesses and residents could really save a lot of money from their energy bills.

I'm very passionate about saving energy and carbon so anything I can do to help I'd be more than happy to.

Andy

[fatcats]

Hi Andy

Just out of interest, are you thinking of a club where people meet up or could people exchange ideas on a thread like this? Or both? Meeting up would be difficult for me at present but I would be extremely interested to hear how others are cutting their energy consumption.

Cheers

[Andybol]

Hi fatcats

I was thinking of a meeting club - but could also set up a thread with the admins permission or I am going to start blogging on medium so will post more here

[fatcats]

Great thanks - would definitely be interested in the blog etc.