The price of the regulated electricity rate will drop by 2.6% from July 1 and will remain until the end of this year, confirmed the Energy Services Regulatory Authority (ERSE). In addition to benefiting almost one million customers in the regulated market, the new extraordinary price review should favor all contracts because it establishes a general reduction in network access fees paid by all consumers.
These drops start from 68.4% in the low voltage that provides service to homes and are accentuated as the voltage level drops, reaching a reduction of 134.4% in the very high voltage, where the highest industrial consumers of electrical energy. However, warns ERSE, the final effect on the bill of customers in the liberalized market – more than five million families and most companies – will also depend “on the energy component that each supplier buys”.
However, ERSE considers that “it will be possible, with the substantial reduction in network access rates, to mitigate the adverse effects of the price rise in the wholesale electricity market”. To curb these prices, it will be necessary for the Iberian natural gas ceiling, which came into force this week, to produce the results expected by the governments of Spain and Portugal.
The largest operator in the market, EDP Comercial, has already announced that it will also reduce prices by an average of 2.6% in July, reductions that could reach 2.9%.
For consumers who will effectively pay 2.6% less electricity from July, the regulator’s accounts point to a monthly saving of between 1 euro and 2.48 euros, for a couple without children and a couple with two children, respectively.
The extraordinary drop in tariffs follows the extraordinary increase registered in April in response to the impact of the war in Ukraine on energy markets, in particular on the price of natural gas used in electricity production.
The reduction now approved “is justified by the early return to consumers of benefits higher than those initially planned in the cost differential with production under the special regime (PRE), with guaranteed remuneration (where the wind producers are), and with the Contracts for the Acquisition of Energy (CAE), as well as additional income from the auctions of greenhouse gas emissions”. The Government had already announced an additional transfer of 150 million euros resulting from these funds to allow the lowering of rates, which was mainly aimed at reducing the amounts paid by companies (medium, high and very high voltage).
The ERSE also points out that this review “is essential to ensure greater rate stability in the current context of high volatility in the energy markets and abnormally high price levels in the wholesale electricity markets, which allows mitigating increases in electricity bills. consumers, through a significant reduction in Network Access rates, which varies between -68.4% in BTN and -134.4% in MAT, between 2022 and 2021.”
However, it also leaves the warning: “It is important to reinforce that the 2022 rate level is a reflection of very specific and conjunctural circumstances that may not be repeated in the coming years, with differentiated impacts by level of tension.”
Source: Observadora
