I don’t have any experience of gas disconnection, but I had the same issue with an electricity meter. Basically for historical reasons we have two electricity meters and I was considering putting a sub main in and between the two distribution boards. I was quoted around £1250 to disconnect the cable, as NGED required the supply cable to be removed back to the roadway and capped, that was with me doing the trenching.

Regarding gas, I found this: https://www.energynetworks.org/customers/disconnecting-from-the-gas-network#:~:text=If%20there%20is%20a%20gas,removed%20by%20your%20energy%20supplier.

Which implies that it might not be necessary to remove the gas pipe and only cap at the utility box. What exactly were you quoted for?

@rusty 

After a bit more ready and a helpful reply from Cadent they should not be involved and OVO can sort the removing of the meter and 'capping' the pipe.

More reading shows OVO are a nightmare with this and even if you can get them to do it they are still charging people standing charges for non existent gas connections.

The best advice I have had so far is transfer gas to another supplier and then ask them to remove the meter and cap the pipe.

I believe the initial quote from Candent was for actually removing the gas pipe back to the supply in the road which makes sense for that cost just not what I need.

@irmartini 

looks like OFGEM recognise there is an issue: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/open-letter-treatment-domestic-households-do-not-use-gas

No idea if there are any standing charge free gas suppliers.

Octopus told me that they don’t charge for electricity meter removal.

@rusty 

I 'believe' they don't charge for Gas meter removal either where as OVO if you can get them to do it charge £106

fingers crossed.

Octopus charged me nothing to remove my gas meter after my heat pump was installed and the boiler removed. The person who removed the meter said that at some stage in the future the DNO would come and cap my supply pipe in the road outside.

@irmartini

Yes, I’ve found an Octopus blog about gas meter removal that says that they don’t charge and are effectively absorbing the costs and charges related to meter removal and capping at present.

Although that would seem to imply that they are happy to subsidise those suppliers that do charge, if they allow new customers to switch in and then immediately request meter removal and capping. Perhaps they hope that they will pick up the electricity business.

I'm hoping Octopus don't charge but I wouldn't have minded paying £100 with OVO an engineer has to come out after all.

My worry and the real reason I'm moving my gas to octopus first was the people with OVO saying they were still paying the Gas standing charge for a long time after the meter was removed.

Posted by: @rusty

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I was quoted around £1250 to disconnect the cable, as NGED required the supply cable to be removed back to the roadway and capped,

I'm puzzled by that.

I have access to the EMU, which is NGED's network mapping tool.

There are thousands of redundant cables all over the place.
They are marked NC (Not Connected), and still show up whenever a contractor seeks permission to excavate in the area.

When an electricity meter is removed, the supply cable can be disconnected "in the road" and the EMU changed to identify its NC status.

Yes, drilling the hole to get at that connection beneath the highway might be expensive, and it could require a short-term disruption of supplies to other houses on the same feed, but I can't see why it's necessary to dig a trench and physically remove the cable.

The situation with gas is somewhat different.

There are safety reasons why you don't want to leave a gas pipe crossing your property, but only capped at the (old) meter position.

But disconnecting a gas supply pipe from the main in the road is no different, and doesn't normally require interruption of service to your neighbours (unless your supply is from a 'medium pressure' main.

Posted by: @irmartini

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We have had a ASHP for a little over 3 months and are happy. so I thought i would change to an induction Hob and have the gas removed saving the standing charge.

 

I contacted OVO my gas supplier and they said it would cost about £100 to remove the gas meter but I would need to inform my DNO (Cadent) 

After searching Cadent's website I found you can apply to have gas removed online and got an initial quote which came out at £1,850 !!

That can't be right, just to turn the gas off?

 

Anyone had any experience of this 

 

Thanks

Ian

 

We've just done the exact same thing, we're with Octopus. They advised we needed to get our usual gas engineer to disconnect any gas appliances in the house, once we'd done that we contacted them and they arranged to come the following week and disconnected our gas at the road for free. All very straightforward and no problems with our billing. By the way, I thought I'd hate the induction hob - I don't, I love it!!

Posted by: @grumpidoc

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We've just done the exact same thing, we're with Octopus. They advised we needed to get our usual gas engineer to disconnect any gas appliances in the house, once we'd done that we contacted them and they arranged to come the following week and disconnected our gas at the road for free. All very straightforward and no problems with our billing. By the way, I thought I'd hate the induction hob - I don't, I love it!!

 

That's Music to me ears 😀 

Interesting as well that you love the induction I was wondering what it would be like as I've always been gas. 

If you want to have enough gas to cook with, but without buying it in and paying the standing charge,
then you can make it from your own DIY Biogas Digester.

There's plenty of tutorials online.