Oil’s well for off-grid rural homeowners who could save up to £500 in energy crisis

BEING off-grid will save rural homeowners hundreds of pounds this year, despite plans to outlaw the use of oil to heat homes not connected to the gas network.

Users of heating oil have been hardest hit by the energy crisis since it began. However, a more stable price for oil-based fuel and rising gas prices means rural homeowners will save more than £500 this year compared to those on fixed-price energy tariffs.

More than 280,000 homes use oil tanks to heat their homes, most of them in the countryside. Over the past three months, families in these properties have paid up to £100 more for their energy compared with those on the gas network. This is because their heating bills have not been protected by an energy price cap, which limits how much suppliers can charge customers for gas and electricity.

However, rural homeowners will end up saving more than £500 on bills compared with homes on mainstream fixed-price energy tariffs, analysis by The Sunday Telegraph has shown. Even those under the price cap, which will rise twice this year, will pay more than those off-grid. The average oil-reliant home uses between 1,700 and 1,800 litres of heating oil per year, according to supplier Certas Energy.

This would cost roughly £979, according to Boiler Juice, a firm that tracks consumer energy prices. When accounting for electricity, the total energy bill for rural homeowners will be around £1,806 per year.

Customers on the average fixed-price tariff will be forced to pay £2,340 over the next 12 months, according to comparison site Uswitch, some £534 more than those reliant on oil.

Four in every 10 rural homes rely on oil as their main fuel source, according to the most recent government data, published in 2019, while almost no homes in city or urban centres, and just 0.2pc of suburban homes, use oil.