Policy & Research

Paying for energy

Wholesale-retail prices

Key points

Suppliers employ hedging strategies when buying wholesale gas and electricity (ie spreading the costs to consumers across a long period of time rather than immediately passing on costs and savings). Please also remember that wholesale prices are not the only costs suppliers face. For an explanation of this see Ofgem’s Energy prices page on their website.

Wholesale/retail charts are attributable to Consumer Focus. The wholesale figures are based on a mixture  of long-term contracts energy suppliers buy when using hedging strategies. UK Power (£/MWh) and NBP (p/th) are taken from the average of the  bid and offer prices  for the next summer and winter contracts respectively. Retail energy figures are taken from energylinx.

Important Note: The big 6 average retail price is based on an average of UK prices for the 14 distribution regions, payment on receipt of bill and based on the current medium usage profile (16,500kWh per annum and 3,300kWh of electricity per annum).

Last updated: 22 April 2013