Today, Tuesday 18 February, Cornwall Insight have updated their prediction for the April to June 2025 price cap. The prediction is for an £85 increase, around 5% of the current price cap levels. It’s the third increase in the price cap in a row and it doesn’t appear to be the last, with other experts in the industry predicting further increases in July 2025 and potentially even October 2025.
Cornwall Insight’s predictions are widely acknowledged to be the most accurate in the market, for example their final prediction for the January 2025 price cap was £1,736 and the cap is actually £1,738.
We’ll have final confirmation of the actual price cap figure for April to June 2025 on Tuesday 25 February, around 7am Ofgem are expected to make the announcement.
Standing Charges Down, Unit Rates Up
According to the prediction from Cornwall Insight, we’re expecting to see the following changes to our standing charges and unit rates:
- Gas standing charges: Reduce by 2.65p per day
- Electricity standing charges: Reduce by 7.97p per day
- Gas unit rates: Increase by 0.66p per kWh
- Electricity unit rates: Increase by 1.71p per kWh
The average medium-usage household uses 11,500kWh of gas per year and 2,700kWh of electricity, so annualy these charges would give the following changes to the average medium-usage household:
- Gas standing charges: Reduce by £9.67 per year
- Electricity standing charges: Reduce by £29.09 per year
- Gas unit rates: Increase by £75.90 per year
- Electricity unit rates: Increase by £46.17 per year
The mathematicians among you will see this is equal an increase of £83.31, which is just rounding errors on the £85 predicted.
These changes are going to benefit lower-usage households more as a reduction in standing charges could outweigh the increase in usage costs. The one silver lining is that the increase is at the start of Spring, the days are longer and warmer meaning we’ll be using less energy, so while the cost of each unit will rise, we’ll all be using fewer units of energy during April, May and June than we have been over the last couple of months.
