In 2019, electricity consumption by users cost about 53.4 billion euros (+1.14 percent compared to 2018); the amount is distributed among the following items :

• purchase spending on the wholesale market, including costs for dispatching services (40.1 percent);
• spending on transmission/measuring service (13.5 percent
• spending to cover general system charges (28.2 percent); • spending due to taxes (18.1 percent).

The spending amount is in line with the annual value estimated for the last few years and is still in sharp decline from the approximately 56 billion estimated for the year 2012 (the first year of observation of the main cost items for electricity consumption).

In the individual cost items, two have undergone a very significant annual change: spending on the purchase of energy on the wholesale market decreased by about 1.5 billion euros (-2.8 percent compared to the entire amount of spending estimated for 2018), whereas spending to cover general system charges increased by about 1.8 billion euros (+3.5 percent). On the other hand, the remaining items varied by almost the same amount with an overall impact, compared to the entire estimated volume for 2018, of just +0.3 percent, due to an increase of about 134 million euros in spending to cover transmission/measurement services and about 149 million euros in taxes.

In particular, the savings achieved in 2019 in wholesale purchases can be attributed mainly to the contraction of the sub-item of procurement on energy markets; in fact, while accounting for the largest share in energy purchase expenditure (about 73 percent compared to 13 percent for marketing/sales and 14 percent for procurement of dispatching services), said sub-item was affected by the reduction in fossil fuel prices traded on the main European platforms