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Why does the same electricity cost more where you live?

Two identical homes, using exactly the same electricity, pay different amounts depending on which part of Britain they sit in. It is not a mistake and it is not your supplier being greedy — the price cap itself is set region by region.

• There is no single price cap. Ofgem sets one for each of 14 regions. On the July–September 2026 cap, the same 2,700 kWh home pays about £873 a year in the East Midlands and £1,005 in North Wales & Merseyside — a £132 difference for identical electricity.
• It splits almost evenly between the two halves of your bill. Of that £132, roughly £69 is the unit rate (25.1p per kWh in the East Midlands against 27.66p in North Wales & Merseyside) and £63 is the standing charge — the daily fee you pay before using anything.
• The standing charge is the widest gap of all. London pays 44.78p a day; North Wales & Merseyside pays 70.76p. Over a year that alone is about £95, and you pay it whether you use any electricity or not.
• The main reason is the local network. A large part of every bill is the cost of running the wires that reach your home — building, maintaining and upgrading the local distribution network. Those costs differ by area, and they are recovered from the customers in that area, so a region with a more expensive network to run has a higher cap.
• You cannot change your region — but the cap is not the price. This is the part that matters. The cap is a maximum, and in every region there are real deals below it. Moving from the cap to the cheapest rate we can see is worth more, almost everywhere, than the entire gap between the cheapest and dearest region.
• Northern Ireland is separate entirely. It has its own energy market, its own suppliers and no Ofgem price cap, so none of the figures above apply there.