this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
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Ah, that's the disconnect. Typically the electric company is the local provider here. Some provide service all the way from generating stations, some broker power contracts from neighboring generating stations but you typically only have one company to buy power from and they are the ones that build the infrastructure to the home. My utility lets you buy power from partnered solar farms, that solar farm would not have any idea what my home size is, but the utility that physically runs the power cables to my house sure does.
Ok, so that's really a major difference here...
In the EU we have heavily liberated energy markets, which let me choose between dozens of different electricity suppliers, each with its own specific value proposition.
In many cases this means that they just compete with each other to deliver the lowest price, but there are also specialized suppliers, e.g. offering custom time or volume based rates.
In my case it is a supplier that is a Greenpeace-originated consumer-owned cooperative (yes, I am one of the owners of the company supplying me with electricity:-) ), specializing in regenerative energy.
These supply companies then pay a part of their revenue to the local providers, reimbursing them for the use of their physical infrastructure.