I wonder if they're paying less than the 70s?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week
> From 1 January 1974, commercial users of electricity were limited to three specified consecutive days' consumption each week and prohibited from working longer hours on those days. Services deemed essential (e.g. hospitals, telephone switchboards, supermarkets and newspaper printing presses) were exempt. Television companies were required to cease broadcasting at 22:30 to conserve electricity [...] The Three-Day Week restrictions were lifted on 7 March 1974.
But nonetheless: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historic...
Year Avg consumer price in today's money
1975 13p/kWh
1985 15p/kWh
1995 n/a
2005 11p/kWh
2015 17p/kWh
2025 26p/kWh
1) we have to pay off operators for the billions of foreign investment they put into new wind and solar farms and grid storage batteries. If we didn't tempt them with a good RoI, they'd invest elsewhere, and we'd still be burning coal. The cost of this is going down year on year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contracts_for_Difference_(UK_e...
2) we're paying for new transmission capacity and replacing worn out transmission route. The fact we don't already have it, which we could've had by charging more for electricity in the 2000s and building it out decades ago, is why today we face enormous curtailment costs today, as we can't get all this wind power from where it's generated to where it's consumed: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/10/05/the-bottlene...
3) our market arrangement is based on everyone bidding to supply power, and we pay everyone who generates the same rate as the highest necessary bidder. Thus the moment that there isn't enough wind power, or there is but it can't get to the region it's needed (see point 2), in come the gas turbines and given that Russia's trying to destroy Ukraine, gas is astronomically expensive. The sooner we solve our bottlenecks and decommission all the gas turbines, the better.
Are those numbers already corrected for inflation?
But the raw infrastructure was super reliable in the 70s. If anything we've used digital systems to chip away at the safety margins of the original designs
On the other hand I have lived in multiple places of varying sorts and regions of England (from London to a village in the North) so I think most places have reliable power, especially towns and cities. Other people's experience is mostly the same.
The OP is asking about the 1970s because that's what the headline is comparing to. My point was the 1970s had a lot of problems going on (labour disputes, oil crisis, extreme weather) so it's not an ideal comparison point.
I don't think I can agree with this. CfDs are (typically) a 15 year contract. For each CfD the price actually increases, as a result of inflation adjustment, each year. Dudgeon wind farm got £161.71 per MWh when it began but today gets £220.95 per MWh because of inflation.
Strike prices came down from where they began, but have since bounced around. Hornsea Project 2 is selling today for £80.08 per MWh but CfDs signed this year for similar Wind Farms would be (in today's money) more like £90 per MWh. Much cheaper than Dudgeon, but they are not in fact just steadily reducing in price.
The big boon for CfDs is the certainty for both parties. In 2022 and to a lesser extent again now, fossil fuel prices went crazy and so the less dependent you are on those prices the better for you. If you'd locked in CCGT prices at 2024 levels for 15 years you'd be doing great... except your providers would be bankrupt because methane just isn't available at those prices.
In 2020 22.0 TWh of electricity = £2.3B subsidy so about £104 per MWh
In 2021 21.6 TWh = £1B or about £46 per MWh
In 2022 20.5 TWh = -£235M subsidy - it paid us £17 per MWh
In 2023 20.6 TWh = £1.4B subsidy so about £68 per MWh
In 2024 31.1 TWh = £2.4B equivalent to £76 per MWh
In 2025 35.8 TWh = £2.6B or £74 per MWh
And this year, so far, 26.7 TWh for £1.7B or £62 per MWh
These numbers are pretty big, but even 35.8 TWh is maybe 12% of generation, most of Britain's renewable energy is not subsidised, it just made enough sense in the free market to build, one trick CfDs were used for, which doesn't end up with the government spending any money on a "subsidy" but which does result in more actual generation is that a potential generator would sign the CfD contract and then use a provision intended for practical obstacles - the sand bank you wanted to put turbines on turns out to be unstable for example, to instead sell the power wholesale at prevailing prices and not get a subsidy. That CfD contract made their project easier to finance, but then the market offered more money and they accepted the risk/ reward choice with their finances in place. Banks may or may not be happy they made loans on this basis, we'll find out when these firms go back for another loan and either get a champagne welcome or very different terms.
* All "subsidy" numbers are net additions to the price paid by the "Free market" clearing auction for electricity. Because metric system we can convert the market prices to the kWh units familiar to a household bill payer as "units" of electricity £100 per MWh = 10p per kWh but remember the wholesale electricity is just on some windswept Yorkshire hilltop or something at that price, you need it delivered to your home which costs extra to do.
> you need it delivered to your home which costs extra to do
If indeed that can be done at all!
https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...
I feel as though there are things in that auction data which are obvious to the generators and maybe the network operator but are utterly opaque to the general public and might help understand why things are as they are or aren't how they might be.
This is what I was meaning. The fact the contracts are auctioned via competitive bidding (usually) leads to price minimisation. Overall it seems to be a well designed procurement system.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-dif...
Anyway, thanks for the additional details, they were very informative.
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/resources/scheme-dashboard...
So that lets me write code for "How much Electricity did we buy this way in year X and how much did we pay for it?" or "If we ignore Drax, can we see what subsidies cost us in each Summer?" and that sort of thing.
You could do much the same in Excel, or indeed if you had your own Power BI - but I can write software, I'm not great at Excel and I refuse to write Power BI reports without being paid for it because it's awful.