Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
The electricity market is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
Your old-fashioned regional electricity board now merely provides the distribution network. National Grid provides the transmission network, as it previously did. Various private companies operate power stations, and all of your electricity comes from these, not from the same old local company.
Broadly speaking, the retailer you buy from has to agree contracts for supply into the grid from the various generating companies. It pays the generators for the proportion of their output that relates to the contract between them, and it pays for distribution services over the local network to your house. They then bill you the total plus their own costs and their profit margin. Different regional distributors face different challenges in operating their networks, and charge different amounts, which is why you may find, with smaller retailers, there is a difference in what they charge customers depending on where in the UK they are.
|
I realise I massively oversimplified i, but as I was using the example of the electricity industry to show how I thought that OFCOM appear to be looking to split the broadband industry into providers and retailers (this is, as you say, how the energy market works).
Of course, assuming it's true, it doesn't necessarily follow that it will provide the best options to the customers. I don't think that the Energy market is currently working in the interest of the consumer.