Your correspondent has just spent a couple of hours examining the cost of electricity for two households in Helsinki and Stockholm. He used two real sets of invoices for the three month period January – March 2020.
The task was horrible because the companies use different ways to present their invoices even though the companies are selling exactly the same product to users.
In Finland the invoices come from two different companies – one for the amount of electricity used and the other for transmitting the electricity…
The Swedes have one that company sends one invoice with the costs of electricity consumed and transmitted.
Basically Finns pay between 37% to 47% more for home delivery than the lucky Swedes. There is no good explanation for this difference even though the Nordic electricity markets, we are told, are supposed to be closely connected.
The difference cannot be see so clearly in my Excel spreadsheet that contains all the details, but here is a summary between two users – one uses 1000 kWh over 3 months while the other uses 3000 kWh over the same period:
Small users in Finland pay a little more than big customers but both are paying far too much compared to Stockholm because the company there is the Finnish government majority owned company called Fortum Oy.
The Swedes has a substantially lower kWh tariff compared to Finland – €0.12 compared to €0.16 per kWh.
As expected bigger consumers in Finland see no big price advantage compared to Swedes because the kWh price is so much higher than Sweden’s price. The power-addicted Finns just pay relatively less for transmission compared to smaller consumers because the fixed monthly fee is relatively smaller.
Taxes paid in both countries are quite similar!
Photo: ABB Sweden
