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On the back of 35% price rises from British Gas and 22% from EDF, here's what you must do now to avoid being hit by price increases from your own supplier.

UK Energy suppliers have been watching each other closely for weeks, if not months, and EDF was the first to blink. Without warning, EDF announced a huge price increase for its current customers of 22% on gas and 17% on electricity.

Most suppliers will now be looking to mimic the size of this increase, in very short order, and they will be announcing these price increases while a good number of UK citizens are abroad on holiday and unable to respond."

This EDF price increase is unlikely to be the end of it. We are as certain as can be that a further round of price increases is inevitable either late this year, or early next year, unless there is a dramatic fall in the wholesale prices for gas and electricity.

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So the doom and gloom messages about the expected increase in gas and electricity prices is now coming true. Consumers are being warned about the potential of 50% price increases on gas and electricity price by next year – and you might be wondering what you can do about it.

The high price of oil is finally catching up with domestic gas and electricity – energy suppliers buy gas and electricity at wholesale prices on a forward basis. And right now, the forward price for gas and electricity is at record highs.

So the bad news is that the doom mongering is for real. Energy suppliers are currently watching each other, and playing a waiting game that has just come to an end. EDF Energy’s move will set the trend for the rest, with price increases of an astounding 20% in the days to come.

Early next year – or maybe even late this year- there will be a further price increase, which could be anywhere up to 20% on top of the previous one. This is because the real cost of gas and electricity is actually 40% higher than what is being charged – but suppliers know that they won’t be able to put through such high increases at once.

We obviously will all have to look very hard at our energy consumption in the future, and find ways of bringing that down.

In the short term though, we encourage all energy consumers to sign up to a Capped Tariff, even if it means paying a little more for your energy right now.

What is a capped (PriceFreeze) tariff?

A capped price is just like every other tariff, except that the unit rates are guaranteed for a period – currently between 12-17 months. This means that you still pay for what you use, but you won’t have to accept price increases during the guarantee period. As you might imagine, there is an approximate 10% premium on those rates, depending on your usage profile, but that is nothing if you consider that prices will shoot up by as much as 50% in just 6 short months.

There are currently 6 offers from a range of suppliers available – all of these can be reviewed on our comparison service. Simply run a search and then click the “PriceFreeze” button at the top of the savings results to see them all in one go, and review the differences.

But you MUST hurry up to take advantage and you must accept the fact that you may be paying a little more in the short term, in exchange for the longer term affordability of your home energy supply.

These deals are going to disappear very fast (suppliers are free to withdraw them without any notice), and once they are gone it will be too late.