Preface

The total at the bottom of a power bill is a one-line conclusion. This series starts from that number and asks of every line: where did this money come from? It climbs back through the rate steps, the tariff, the wholesale price, the power plants, all the way to the wires. It begins with what a kWh is, so anyone can follow, and each part also marks the traps for people who handle these numbers at work. By the end, you can tell which line of your bill a tariff headline is about, and who decides what sits behind that line.

Contents

1. 1From the rice cooker switch to the billfive stops on the road of one kWhOverall
2. 2From the power plant to your hometransmission, distribution and a balance kept every momentGrid
3. 3MW is the engine, MWh is the distance drivenhow electricity's power differs from its amountSupply
4. 4Nuclear makes the power, LNG sets the pricethe job each source doesSupply
5. 5The price of power at 4 a.m. and 7 p.m.the same 1 kWh, 40 won apart within a day (September average)Demand
6. 6A product with no warehousewho makes, buys and runs Korea's power marketSupply
7. 7SMP, the wholesale price of electricitythe price the last generator setsSupply
8. 8Same price, different paycheckcapacity payments and the settlement adjustment factorSupply
9. 9The six lines of an electricity billread one by one, from the topDemand
10. 10How the electricity bill climbs its stepsthree tiers, and the wider tiers of summerDemand
11. 11Check your power bill by handa Korean electricity bill, rebuilt in six stepsDemand
12. 12The hands that set electricity pricesthe formula, the limits and the government's permissionDemand

Photo credits: No. 7

Other series

The wires in the last part lead into *The grid story*; the rules behind the tariff unfold, date by date, in *How the rules changed*.