Consumers in Greece see an increase of electricity prices in April despite the decrease in the wholesale price. “Blame the electricity theft,” says General Secretary for Energy, Aristotelis Aivaliotis.
The cost created by electricity theft is sent to providers who on their turn send it to consumers.
400 million euros a year are paid by citizens additionally in order to cover power thefts, Aivaliiotis said.
Speaking to state broadcaster ERT on Wednesday morning, Avialiotis said “You must know that the wholesale market is not automatically reflected in the retail market, because, of course, the providers and their profits also intervene, but also because many of the prices of renewable energy sources are determined by tariffs, there is no free market at play.”
He justified the high prices by electricity providers blaming the electricity theft.
“Until now, the cost of electricity theft has been paid by the consumers. Now we are taking some measures which will deal with other distortions, for example blackouts and network losses which are 8% to 10%,” he said.
He added that the government implements “very severe penalties for those stealing power and are being caught.”
“You should know that DEDDIE (Greek Electricity Distribution Network) arrests 13,000 electricity thieves every year. Until now, DEDDIE imposed some fines after measuring how much someone stole for the previous five years. Unfortunately it cannot go further back due to the legislative framework and there are the criminal courts which until now have imposed either a fine or imprisonment.”
“When setting up their cost list providers assume that they will lose 4% from thieves and put that in the price. This is not fair and we are now going to fix this.
We have given orders to DEDDIE to measure consumption every month,” he added.
While wholesale electricity prices are going down, consumers will see no benefit in April nor the next few months.
The average wholesale market price fell in March to 67.5 euros per megawatt-hour from 73.61 euros/MWh in February and forecasts for April point to a further decline to 60 euros/MWh and probably below these levels, as weather-driven demand declines and the cheap renewable generations of energy strengthen, covering over 50% of the power mix.
PS I guess, there is no electricity theft in other European countries, that’s why Greece has the most expensive prices…
