• Fire Witch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 month ago

    In reality, this doesn’t mean that consumers are reimbursed to use electricity, as they’re not paying raw market price.

    So this is literally just pure profit for the producers, and they’re still complaining

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      No it’s not, it’s a clear loss situation for producers. The companies that sell to end users may make a bit extra, but even when they have fixed price agreements, this is calculated in to some degree.
      Here (Denmark) we have variable price agreements by the hour, and most companies stopped offering fixed prices at all, after the price hikes when Russia invaded Ukraine. That was a situation where many electricity traders (middlemen) made huge profits, and the bill was handed down to consumers. Some companies expected prices to increase more than they did, so the fixed price agreements were awfully expensive, Often more than double what they should have been. They were also generally payed in advance, which caused huge bills even if you cut consumption hard.
      The electricity market is an awful market, because it’s treated as if it’s a free and open market, but in reality it isn’t, because it’s tied to a lot of infra structure, and it’s also tied to a lot of long term agreements, because that’s the only way to plan infra structure properly.

    • zaphod
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      1 month ago

      No, it’s pure profit for energy intensive industrial/commercial consumers as they get paid for using energy. The producers have to decide to either lose money by paying someone to use the energy or lose money by idling their power plants as upkeep still costs money.