In my dream world this is what the roof of my house would look like. Solar panels and possibly even a small wind turbine too. I dream of being self sufficient when it comes to electricity and as I sit here on a sunny and windy day it frustrates me so much that I can’t be powering the laptop I type on with renewable energy.
But, I am. Well, sort of.
You see, last year I finally got round to going on to a utilities price comparison site. For some reason I’d been putting it off for years as I’d just always assumed that it was going to be a really tedious process to go through and that I was going to have to spend ages filling in loads and loads of forms just to find out that we were actually already supplied by the people who charged the least. Although I dreamed of self sufficiency solar panels were (and sadly still remain) unaffordable to us, and we also assumed that a green energy supplier would cost us more than what we were already paying. How wrong we were on so many levels.
Firstly the price comparison process. I really didn’t need much information at all in the end, and everything I did need could be found on the previous year’s worth of bills. Things like how much we used and meter numbers. All the other fields were the obvious things I already knew like address etc. Within just a few minutes I had a table in front of me showing all the different tariffs for different suppliers and what my annual and monthly costs would be. Conveniently arranged with the cheapest first. Far quicker and easier than I’d expected.
The next surprise was who was top of the list. A company I had never heard of before, offering me a tariff that was considerably less than we were currently paying. Even more unbelievably it stated that 20% of their electricity came from renewable sources, far higher than the company that we were already with.
We felt a bit worried though. Who were these people? Why had we not heard of them before? What if it was all a big con? So off we went and with the help of google spent about 24 hours researching them thoroughly and really liked everything we read. The next evening we went back to decide to switch to them, only to find out that they also offered a 100% renewable plan which was a bit more expensive than the cheapest plan we’d been looking at, but still cheaper than what we had been paying with our existing supplier.
So, there we were with the best of both worlds, a cheaper tariff with 100% renewables! A complete win win from a green and thrifty angle and not at all what we had expected to be able to get.
From there on the switching process was really simple. We just had to provide our meter numbers and a few meter readings at specific points in time and all the rest was taken care of.
As for our new supplier. Well, just over a year later we’re still with them and still really happy. Their customer service is great, we still get a fantastic price from them and we’re still on a 100% renewable energy plan with them. It makes me smile to think how much greener we’ve been over the last year as a result of switching providers.
So, if like us you’d like to go green with your energy then please do consider switching supplier, as you too may be surprised at what you can afford.
The #PowerToSwitch campaign encourages people to switch suppliers and save money. With 27 energy companies on the market and some fixed deals £100 cheaper than they were a year ago, there’s never a better time to find a great deal, switch and save.
— Switching times have been cut in half to about 17 days, down from 5 weeks last year
— Families can save around £200, sometimes even more, by switching
— The government has encouraged new suppliers to market; there are now 27 independent suppliers
— It is easy to compare using Ofgem-approved comparison sites via www.BeAnEnergyShopper.com.
Disclaimer: I’m working with BritMums and DECC alongside the #PowertoSwitch campaign. I have been compensated for my time. All editorial and opinions are my own. Visit www.BeAnEnergyShopper.com for more information about switching energy suppliers.
Image courtesy of dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I love that you sought a company providing renewable energy, that is so important these days. We did invest in solar panels and they were fitted in November, the past few months have been very grey and short days so I’m looking forward to seeing a noticeable change in our energy bills as we go forward.
Thanks for taking part in #PowerToSwitch I’m commenting for myself and on behalf of BritMums.
Very interested to hear what the effect is on your bills Mari over a year or so.