Money expert Martin Lewis says energy customers should be getting their money back in April or May if they have too much credit on their account.

Martin Lewis returned on his podcast – The Martin Lewis Podcast – on Spotify, BBC Sounds and Apple Music on Thursday with a tip for energy customers with any energy firm about getting their cash back in April or May. Though Martin didn’t name any specific companies, the tip will work just as well for anyone whether they’re with British Gas, EOn, Octopus Energy, EDF or any other firm if you’re paying by direct debit and you have a smart meter or can take regular meter readings.

The reason Martin is urging customers to get their money back this month is due to what he calls ‘the direct debit cycle’.

This is because your energy bills are averaged out across the year – you pay the same amount in the winter as you do in the summer, even though you use more energy in winter when it’s cold. So, for this reason, you should be building up credit in summer and using it up in winter.

Martin Lewis said: “We’re in January, we’re at the beginning of the year, it’s cold. You’re using up credit. If you’re in credit you’re starting to use it up, if you’re not you’re starting to build up debt.

“You continue on average to use up more credit, in other words you’re using more energy than your monthly direct debit, until the end of April, the beginning of May. And it’s the 24th of April right now, shock horror.”

It means that right now, at the end of April or start of May, you shouldn’t have a lot of credit on your account. If you do – call up and get it back because you’ve been overpaying through the winter.

Martin continued: “So this is the absolute bottom point of the graph, when you’re either in the minimum credit or the maximum debt.

“From this point onwards, as we start to go through the summer, as you use less heating you tend to use less energy than your monthly direct debit so you start to either pay off that debt or start to build up your credit. You continue to do that typically until the middle of November. From the middle of November onwards is where you start to use up any excess credit that you have or start to build up the debt again.

“So you have two points of the year where you can look at this perfectly: the start of May or the end of April, and the middle of November.

“Now the start of May means you should have the minimum amount of credit, so in a perfect world no-one should be in any credit at all right now, you should probably be in energy debt, it depends when you moved to the firm. So that’s why this is the moment to go and check your energy credit on your account.”

Martin said you need a working smart meter, or to submit an up to date meter reading and wait until the meter reading you submitted has been factored into the amount of credit you have.

Once you’ve done that, Martin says his rough rule of thumb is if you have more than one to one and a half months’ worth of credit, “I would be asking for it back”.