Taxed for Trying
My electricity bill arrived this week.
Line item: network losses. €1.54.
I have solar panels on my balcony. I generate electricity. I reduce what I draw from the grid.
I still pay, in full, the standardised penalty for everyone else’s losses.
His name is the ghost consumer.
He doesn’t generate. He doesn’t store. He doesn’t adjust. He just pays. And when the price spikes, he gets a voucher.
The problem is he doesn’t exist anymore — if he ever did.
And the gap between who the system imagines and who is actually standing in front of it is no longer just a design flaw. In the middle of another fossil fuel crisis, it has a price.
New newsletter out. On ghost consumers, compounding choices, and what €1.54 says about who the energy transition is built for.
