Where can you find authoritative data on energy prices?
The energy savings from solar heating is the main economic
argument for choosing to install a system, and this will continue to be the
case even with the imminent arrival of the domestic Renewable Heat Incentive in
the spring of next year. For solar PV systems the fall in cost of equipment and installation and the accompanying reduction in the Feed in
Tariff means that own-use savings on electricity bills have become a much more
significant component of the economic justification.
Energy prices have been changing rapidly, so it’s important
for renewable energy businesses to have access to up-to-date, accurate and trustworthy
price information to show to customers when modelling the financial benefits from their investment.
A quick survey of colleagues at a recent Solar Trade Association meeting produced the following list of resources. Do you have any to add? Please use the comments section below.
UK Government Statistics
There’s a wealth of energy statistics on the gov.uk website,
and the challenge can be finding the information you want.
By their nature, the statistics are backward-looking so
often more than 12 months out of date.
Energy prices are often presented either as ‘average energy
bills’ or stated as a percentage of 2005 costs.
The best source I could find was in the Quarterly Energy Prices
publication, in which the following two tables show the unit price of energy:
Table 2.2.3 Average annual
domestic electricity bills in 2012 for selected towns and cities in the UK with
average unit costs
Table 2.3.3 Average annual
domestic gas bills in 2012 for selected towns and cities in the UK with average
unit costs
Sutherland
The Sutherland tables are a fixture of the energy industry,
compiled quarterly since 1976 they show domestic energy costs heating and hot
water costs across a range of standard house types across the UK. The data is apparently used by government in
preparing its own statistics, but there is a cost to accessing the data.
Boilerjuice
Boilerjuice.com is an online quotation website for heating
oil. It publishes average prices of UK
heating oil:
http://www.boilerjuice.com/heatingOilPrices.php
Nottingham Energy Partnership
NEP publishes current average prices for electricity, gas, and heating oil together with many other fuels. Also available are reports analysing trends over time. This was the most relevant reference I could find for current energy prices.
http://www.nottenergy.com/energy_cost_comparison/
Do you know of any resources you can share? If so, please let us know in the comments section below.
