22 million accounts will feel nothing.
That is not always good news.
About 40% of British energy accounts are on fixed tariffs. When the cap jumps 13% on 1 July, those households will not notice a thing. Cue smugness. Except a fix is not a discount, it is a bet, and quite a lot of people have accidentally bet against themselves.
🎲 A fix is a bet, not a shield
When you fix, you and the supplier are taking opposite sides of a wager about the next twelve months. They have a trading desk and a weather model. You have a comparison website and a Tuesday evening.
Sometimes you win. Anyone who fixed cheaply before this July rise has won and should enjoy it.
But a fix does not protect you from prices. It just moves when you find out. And the exit fee is there to make sure you cannot change your mind once you know the answer.
🕰️ The bit that actually costs you
Here is the thing almost nobody says out loud. A fixed tariff usually fixes a flat rate. The same price at 3am as at 6pm.
Which sounds fair, and is in fact the problem. The real electricity market does not have one price. It has a price that swings by a factor of ten within a single day, and increasingly goes below zero at lunchtime.
A flat tariff averages all of that away and hands you the average. You are paying a smooth price for a lumpy thing, and the lumpiness is where the money is.
💸 You can be on a fix and still earn
This is the part people get wrong, so it is worth being blunt about it.
Getting paid for flexibility is not a tariff. It is not a switch. It does not care who supplies you or what you pay them. It is a separate payment for a separate service: letting the grid lean on your devices when it needs to.
Any tariff. Any supplier. Fixed, variable, prepayment, does not matter. If you are locked into a fix for another nine months, you can still earn from the grid tomorrow.
Fixing your tariff means you have decided not to think about energy for a year. Which is completely reasonable, and also exactly what the person who sold it to you was counting on.