The updated edition of the Appendix to the monograph Electricity: Anatomy of Costs published as part of the RSEview series is available online. It reports the adjustment (as of the end of 2018) of the main cost items on the bill.

In 2018, community spending on electricity consumption can be estimated at about 53.5 billion euros, up slightly from 2017 (+1 percent). However, compared to 2012 – the year of the greatest surge of photovoltaic installations (about 82 percent of the entire existing installations was connected to the grid in 2012), in which spending was around 56 billion euros – a decrease in total spending of about 5 percent can be shown.

In particular, in the last 3-4 years there has been a significant reduction in expenditures to cover general system charges (mainly attributable to the A3 component related to the incentive of renewable sources) and costs for dispatching service (mainly of the uplift component for services traded on the MSD services market).

Therefore, the slight increase on the total expenditure in the last year is to be attributed to the trend in international markets of fuel costs for thermoelectric power plants; although in 2018 demand remained unchanged compared to 2017 and production from thermoelectric power plants even decreased, the price of gas on Italy’s reference market (VTP – Virtual Trading Point) increased significantly (+22.5 percent), thus leading to a PUN increase of 13.5 percent.

To summarize, in recent years the Italian System has been more efficient in terms of operating costs and system charges; however, when it comes to energy supply for end uses there is still a certain dependence on fossil sources (mainly gas) that often jeopardizes the efficiency results achieved.

For context, the first edition of the monograph Electricity: Anatomy of Costs, of which this Appendix is the latest available update, was published in 2014.