You may have heard recently about the huge increases in the wholesale price of gas that is increasing the cost of gas and electricity. In turn, this has forced some of the smaller energy retailers out of business as they offer very low tariffs that are not sustainable when the wholesale prices change significantly.
SDEN realise that as one of your energy providers you may have concerns about your heat supplies from us and this note is to hopefully set your minds at rest.
In short, we see no adverse effect to SDEN’s ability to provide a continuing service to our customers and we do not intend to implement any further price reviews until April 2022. This is one of the benefits of being connected to the Sutton Decentralised Energy Network.
The full explanation is below….
SDEN is in a fortunate position where the dependence on natural gas is extremely low as the energy to heat to your home is obtained from the Beddington Land Fill Gas site which is currently providing more than sufficient to supply the heating and hot water service to the New Mill Quarter residents.
For reference, the landfill engines utilise a combination of methane and CO2 gases which would otherwise be exhausted into the atmosphere but technology has advanced significantly to enable these gases to be harnessed in order to produce energy.
We do possess the 3 natural gas fired boilers situated in the energy centre, however, this is a standby function and will only be utilised if the LFG engines were to fail and since we successfully connected in March 2021 we have been able to achieve a significantly high rate of availability.
With regards to how we implement price increases. SDEN, as part of its pricing policy, does use the wholesale natural gas price indices when calculating tariffs (in addition to other indices allied to the rate of inflation and the cost of employing people). However, your tariffs are fixed until April 2022 and no changes will occur before then. No other factors can change the price and SDEN is not able to inflate prices to cover any loss of profit.
We fully appreciate the nervousness of many energy consumers and the question of whether price increases will be passed on to the consumer in the short term and to what extent. It is our hope that we have allayed any fears of immediate price increases or cuts in heat supply.