Households and small businesses buy electricity from their energy retailer, not directly from the wholesale market.
Retailers offer households and small businesses a retail contract or ‘plan’ for supplying electricity.
The plan sets out how consumers will be charged for their energy over a fixed period of time.
The wholesale cost of electricity supplied by generators, like Stanwell, is only part of an electricity bill.
A typical bill comprises: wholesale costs (the cost of generating electricity); network costs (the cost of poles and wires used to transport electricity); environmental costs (direct costs of government schemes like the Renewable Energy Target); and retail and residual service costs.
In 2019/20, the cost of wholesale electricity made up approximately 39 per cent (36 per cent in 2018/19) of the total electricity price Queensland residential consumers paid.
Source: The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) collates and published this information in “Residential Electricity Price Trends”.