The government has introduced a legislative intervention to impose a maximum charge limit on the fixed monthly charges of electricity bills, Environment and Energy Minister Kostas Skrekas announced in Parliament on Thursday.
“We have stipulated that suppliers must declare the net price of electricity. We finally saw that some suppliers, while setting a net price, over-multiplied the fixed charges. That is why, today, we are bringing an amendment and imposing on the suppliers a maximum ceiling of 5 euros per month for fixed charges. For the monthly fee, the upper ceiling they can have is no more than €5,” said Skrekas, confirming Kathimerini’s report on Thursday morning.
“This is how we are bringing the charges down from €15 and €20 – some others had higher fixed charges in proportion to consumption, which is not correct – and therefore by putting a ceiling in place we have them checked,” the minister emphasized. He also informed the plenary that the legislative intervention would be submitted later on Thursday.
The Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE) had informed all providers to send detailed data documenting the cost orientation of their tariffs by Thursday noon – in other words, to what extent the price of a kilowatt-hour is justified by costs, as well as the different fixed charges compared to those they had before the issuance of the new rates.
The prices given by suppliers for August consumption range between €0.48 and €0.68 per kilowatt-hour. The cost for consumers will be limited to €0.14-0.17/KWh after the subsidy of €0.337 cents announced by Skrekas earlier this week.
Power supply companies, however, are anxiously watching the development of electricity prices in the wholesale market after the latest rally in the price of natural gas, as the chances of falling behind their forecasts and finding themselves with losses that may not be manageable are increasing. The drought in Western Europe is also triggering further increases in electricity prices. [kathimerini]
