West Midlands energy bills

Every region in Great Britain pays a different energy price cap, and the reason is the local distribution network rather than anything a household does. Roughly a quarter of a typical bill goes to building and maintaining the poles, cables, substations and meters that deliver power to the door, and that cost is recovered from the homes connected to it. Where the network is long and the population sparse, a large fixed infrastructure cost is shared between relatively few customers, so the per-household charge is higher; where demand is dense and the network compact, the same cost is spread much more thinly. Ofgem sets the cap separately for each of the 14 distribution regions every quarter to reflect those differences, which is why two identical households using exactly the same amount of gas and electricity can still face noticeably different annual bills depending only on where they live. The figure shown above is the typical, medium-usage estimate for West Midlands under the current cap; a household that uses more or less than the typical amount will see its bill scale up or down from there.