Southern Electric Cuts Gas Prices

Hot on the heals of British Gas Southern Electric have announced that they are cutting the cost of their electricity and gas supplies from 29th March 2010 for all customers.

It’s been a long time coming after the announcement that British Gas reduced the cost of their electricity bills by 7% but now Southern Electric announced this week that they are also reducing their electricity and gas prices across the board and reducing some of their fixed costs such as standing charges for gas supplies.

This announcement suggests that Southern Electric prices are now 5% less than what British Gas customers will pay. So what does it really mean in the small print – here’s a summary of the reductions:

• 4% reduction on gas prices overall for the average Southern Electric customer
• 7% reduction on single fuel (ie: customers with just gas supplies)
• 9% reduction on prepayment tariffs
• no change on electricity prices

Additionally this now means that the gas prepayment tariff is the lowest in the UK thus helping people on lower incomes. This announcement comes with the wholesale prices the lowest they have been for some time but it’s a shame the reduction is not made with immediate effect as with the British Gas reduction that was previously announced.

This small change has been greeted as a token gesture by industry experts especially as the change comes once the heavy use winter months come to an end and for those customers that don’t use much gas their bills will hardly change at all.

The overall reduction of 4% is also for an average home as the fixed price element has been increased from £53 to £98 for the first 1143kwh of usage. Similar changes have been made for the other half of the Scottish and Southern group who also trade under the names of Scottish Power and SWALEC. Only British Gas and Southern Electric have so far cut prices this year whilst the wholesale prices are at some of the lowest for the past couple of years and industry experts and consumer organisations are not only calling for the other energy companies to follow suit but cut prices even further.

For the moment we are still recommending British Gas for electricity and gas supplies as their pricing structure is not only consistently lower but they were the first to reduce prices last month and are now very competitive in this market place where as before they seemed to be happy to have higher than average prices across the board.

More savings on all energy products can be had by signing up to tariffs online and paying by monthly direct debit. There are also offers on smart meters that feed your meter readings directly back to your energy supplier so you’ll never have to take another meter reading again and you can be sure that your bills are always accurate and never over estimated. So if you are fed up with high energy bills then look at British Gas’s website for a quote or pop over to the many online comparison sites.