Martin Lewis saves fan £400 with 5-minute energy bill change

Martin Lewis saved a grateful fan a staggering £454 with a clever five-minute hack that nearly anybody can do.

Speaking on The Money Show, the saving expert explained how much can be saved by switching energy to a fixed tariff with the help of an audience member to demonstrate.

The show aired on the day it was announced that the energy price cap will rise by 6.4% from April 1 and one audience member explained that he and his partner would be affected by the change and asked what he could do to limit the impact.

Lewis explained: “You want to get off of the price cap because the fixed rates are so much cheaper than the energy price cap.

“The first thing is if you fix, you get peace of mind and you get certainty. You can get up to 5% off at the moment compared to the current price cap and it is worth noting that there are a couple of comparison sites that have exclusive deals at the moment.”

He added: “Most of the best fixes at the moment do not require you to have a smart meter so do not let that put you off.

“The biggest message tonight though is you’re probably going to do a comparison and it is probably going to tell you that you won’t save much. That is because the saving is compared to the current price cap, that price cap is going up 6.4% in April.

“So if it says £20 or £30 in reality you are probably talking £100.”

The audience member who demonstrated it found that this was an understatement, as they revealed at the end of the show that they had saved an eye-watering £454 per year on their energy by switching to a fixed rate.

The energy price cap was introduced in 2019 and places an upper limit on what energy providers can charge for each unit of energy used.

The cap is reviewed quarterly by the energy regulator, Ofgem and today’s increase, which will take effect from April 1, is the third consecutive rise.

The regulator blamed the ongoing war in Ukraine for disrupting energy availability and pipelines as it confirmed the cap on gas and electricity charges would rise by £111.

The government said: “In practice, this rise will mean an increase of around £9 per month for a typical household over the next 3 months.”

The rise means that on average, a typical household will pay £1,849 for their energy over the course of a year.

The 6.4% rise will mean that households are paying around £600 more for gas and electric than they were three years ago prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The government website added that energy prices are rising because “international gas prices have risen, bringing British energy bills up with them.”

It continued: “That’s because the price we pay for energy in the UK is set by gas prices on the global market, over which we have no control.

“As a result of recent events that have affected the market, which the whole of Europe is dealing with, wholesale gas prices covered by the period of this price cap are around 15% higher than they were in the period covered under the previous price cap. This is comparable to the rise in prices across Europe.”