"Free market" ; "Threat of government intervention". You have got to be kidding. The entire electricity industry, including all its buyers, sellers, and regulators, is a wholly artificial construct. It was set up as a political exercise, and depends on legislation for every aspect of its existence. It's a pretend market. The notion that government intervention is a "threat" is drifting far away into fantasy.
IMO, regardless of who owns each electricty supplier; gas supplier; heating oil supplier or concrete supplier (just those for starters) each of those groups are all cartels which have learned to keep their cheating activities hidden.
So you mean that the power companies aren't even the people generating the power? Well, knock me down with a feather. They must be somewhat parasitical, then: mere middlemen.
Yup and don't forget Dinorwic in Wales 0-1800 MW in 16 seconds makes a Panigale Superlegerra a bit tame Dinorwig Power Station - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Grid Control (certainly used to be) at Becca Hall, its location was a state secret, I see now you can Google it and get the location. It was owned and ran by NGC, but as I said I'm a few years outta date. The Euro is starting to drop Glid, its a real complex mess designed that way so as you'll never know quite whose fleecing and by how much
And there was I naïvely assuming that an electric company made electricity. Doh! In fact, they are just electricity dealers. And from what Stang says, they don't come and read your meter either. It's all sounding very much like a recipe for multiple players to make multiple rake-offs.
It's worse than that, Glidd. In addition to the various "suppliers" (actually, resellers but let's not quibble), there are then brokers who will arrange for bespoke energy supply contracts between the end-user and the "supplier". Yet another layer of payola. Energy producer > Supplier > Broker > Customer This country produces a thing and then whole industries spring up to sell that thing several times over. Apparently this is known as "having an economy"
This is what happens when you move from manufacturing to "services". All these people are supplying a "service" and as they all add margin for this service this is growing the economy and this is what George Osborne is so pleased about. Growth is good, never mind that wages don't go up or anyone get much richer (apart from investors).
