Once a quarter Ofgem sets its energy price cap. The price cap doesn't limit how much your bill could be - that depends on how much energy you use. But it does limit how much energy companies can charge per unit and for their standing charges.

If the price cap doesn't limit my bill, why should I care?

The price cap gives us a good idea of the state of energy prices in the UK. And if you look at the changes over time, we can see trends and the impact of certain events on the energy markets - all of which have an impact on your bills.

Which brings us to our price cap tracker:

The orange line is the price cap set by Ofgem since 2019. It might be useful to see this in three distinct eras - pre-invasion of Ukraine (stable), 2022-23 spike (mitigated by the government energy price guarantee in green) and post-invasion (a welcome change from the spike, but higher than pre-invasion and less stable).

The red line takes us into the future with EDF's price cap forecast.*

Why isn't there a big jump on the graph for the 13% increase we just had?

That's all to do with typical domestic consumption values (TDCVs) - changes to these are represented by the black lines on the graph.

We'll cover this is a future post, but in short: yes the price cap has gone up 13%, but the price cap is based on average consumption, and Ofgem has just updated its assessment of what's average (as it did in 2019 and 2023).

So what does the future hold for energy prices?

Based on the EDF forecast, more of the same, only more expensive if you're continuing to use energy at the same rate as you have over the last three years. The red line may look like it's continuing to wobble between £1600-1800, but taking the TDCVs into account pushes those numbers even higher.

We'll be posting more about the price cap, how it's calculated and what it means for your bills, and updating our tracker when the price cap changes in three months. Watch this space!

*The EDF forecast is updated weekly - this is the prediction as of 14 July 2026.