alt Hacker NewsDid those savings actually trickle to end costumer bills? I often read how renewables are making electricity cheaper but I only pay more and more despite the share of them increasing here in electricity generation.
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Well we can see how much we would even expect this to matter.
For example take the 2024 Financial Report of Hydro One (distributor for Ontario) [0].
Apparently they earned 8,484M in revenue, and spent 4,143M in Power, and Net Income was 1,156M. Putting these together you can sort of conclude that the price of the electricity is around 1/2 their expenses.
If I then go to Ontario Power Generation financial reports 2024 [1], Revenue was apparently 7,187M, with Fuel Costing 1,049M, and net income around 1,006M. This sort of tells you that the price of fuel is only around 1/6th of their expenses.
I spent some time thinking about this and I'm not sure what to conclude other than probably a lot of what you pay is just paying for staff and maintenance and so even if fuel was free where I live it would be like a 1/12th change. Assuming the big savings in Wind are supposed to be from not having to pay for Fuel.
[0] https://www.hydroone.com/investorrelations/Reports/Hydro%20O...
second paragraph of the article starts with:
> The sector contributed 0.25% to GDP and enabled savings on consumers' electricity bills of more than 4.6 billion euros in 2024, with an average reduction in the wholesale price of close to 20 euros per MWh.
in the UK the price everyone pays is set according to the marginal price
essentially this means if there's one milliwatt of gas on the grid: everyone pays the gas price
as a result consumers see very benefit from renewables
(but the renewable generators are making out like bandits)
One reason cost might be going up is because the grid needs upgrades.
A house might have a typical peak power demand of 1kWH. Now? It might peak at 10. I'm making up these numbers by the way.
Everywhere that I know of, you pay for the grid through your bill.