🚨NEW: Ofgem price cap raises by 6.4%, meaning customers will pay £111 more on average (per year) on energy bills. Higher energy costs aren’t just due to rising gas prices. Companies are exploiting our dysfunctional energy system for profit. Here’s how they do it. 🧵 - ThreadSky

cmmonwealth.bsky.social • 3 days ago

🚨NEW: Ofgem price cap raises by 6.4%, meaning customers will pay £111 more on average (per year) on energy bills.

Higher energy costs aren’t just due to rising gas prices. Companies are exploiting our dysfunctional energy system for profit.

Here’s how they do it. 🧵

Comments

cmmonwealth.bsky.social•3 days ago

In the 3 years since Russia invaded Ukraine, we have *still* not decoupled electricity from the price of gas, meaning we still pay far above the price needed.

But the price of gas isn’t the only problem. The problem is how we manage our electricity market.

cmmonwealth.bsky.social•3 days ago

Our electricity sector is a messy patchwork, full of cracks & loopholes that profit-seeking companies can exploit to inflate our bills.

cmmonwealth.bsky.social•3 days ago

Contracts for Difference (CfDs — contracts between low carbon electricity generators & the Govt) helped to stabilise prices in 2022.

But profit-oriented operators were still able to game this system and enjoy windfall profits at our expense.

https://www.current-news.co.uk/significant-commercial-incentive-for-offshore-wind-farms-to-delay-cfd-activation/

cmmonwealth.bsky.social•3 days ago

Drax was also able to game the system by switching power generation between their CfD plants and their non-CfD plants, allowing them to avoid paying back hundreds of millions of £ to the public despite receiving over £1 billion in subsidies.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-uk-power-stations-avoided-paying-back-consumers/

cmmonwealth.bsky.social•3 days ago

In cases of over-congestion of the National Grid, we pay wind-down costs to wind farms (to get them to stop producing energy) — who, in turn, game this system by over-stating their generation to charge more of these wind-down fees.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-uk-wind-farms-overstate-output/

cmmonwealth.bsky.social•3 days ago

The extortionate prices set by the gas plants on whom we rely for backup power are even more severe.

On January 8, 2 gas plants charged us up to an extraordinary £5,750/MWh to prevent a blackout.

This is not an engineering problem — it’s profiteering.

https://www.neso.energy/news/what-happened-margins-8-january

Posting Rules

Be respectful to others
No spam or self-promotion
Stay on topic
Follow Bluesky's terms of service

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply