Have you appointed yourself guardian of the house thermostat? Found yourself internally seething as you’ve walked into an empty room where all the lights are blazing? Or perhaps you’ve taken to doing a sweep of everyone’s plugged-in but unused chargers at the end of each day (it’s not passive-aggressive, you tell yourself, it’s just practical)?

Last month, prime minister Liz Truss announced an energy price freeze that will cap the average energy bill at £2,500 until 2024, with a unit rate of around 34p per kilowatt hour for electricity and 10.3p per kwh for gas. The figure is substantially less than the staggering Ofgem cap of £3,549, which was previously set to be introduced in October, but even so, it marks a huge step up from last year.

Utility costs have spiked to a level that will seriously stretch the average household’s finances, meaning that energy use will be at the forefront of almost everyone’s mind as winter approaches. A survey of almost 5,000 renters by flatmate-finding platform SpareRoom earlier this year found that 96% of flatsharers are concerned about the cost of living, with 69% saying that they have had to make cutbacks.

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