With the New Year, the government’s caps on energy prices, which were supposed to protect customers from high bills, ended. Large suppliers report over 50,000 customers who did not convert their expensive fixations to cheaper tariffs. For these people, the new year can bring an energy price increase of tens of percent.
According to statistics from large suppliers, over 52,000 people with energy prices above the government ceiling did not switch to lower tariffs. Despite the fact that the companies invited them to do so.
Many of these customers will pay extra on their January invoice because the ceiling was only valid until the end of last year. But for some, the increase in price in the order of tens of percent can be avoided.
“For those who were on the price ceilings yesterday, we proactively left the price on the ceilings, they will save money. They would pay tens of percent more,” said ČEZ spokesman Roman Gazdík. For example, PRE and innogy took the same step.
“We know that in the last group there are x seniors who are uncontactable or people to whom the information simply does not reach. That is why we went out of our way to accommodate those customers. The second thing is the fact that commodity prices were dropping significantly and we were able to take this step, ” said Martin Chalupský, innogy’s spokesperson.
However, some suppliers did not reduce the price to the level of the expiring government ceiling to customers who could not be contacted. “We have decided to contact these customers, staying with the price above the price ceiling is their decision,” said E.ON company spokesman Roman Šperňák.
According to experts, energy prices on the market will fall next year, just like in recent months. “If nothing exceptionally bad happens on world markets, I expect in the first half of the year that a number of suppliers can improve their offer,” noted energy expert Jiří Gavor.
However, suppliers can only influence the unregulated part of the final energy price. That is, the price of power electricity or gas. The regulated part of the energy price, i.e. payment for the operation, maintenance or strengthening of the energy system, which is determined by the Energy Regulatory Office, will rise significantly.
In the case of electricity, by 65.7 percent. For gas, the price of the regulated component will rise by 38.8 percent this year. The regulated part of the price, however, represents a smaller share of the final price. It is roughly 40 percent for electricity, 20 percent for gas.
Despite the increase in the price of the regulated component of the energy price, analysts assume that the price for end consumers may also go down. On the other hand, energy will become more expensive for households, which this year will catch up with the price fixations from before the energy crisis began. According to experts’ estimates, there may be hundreds of thousands of such cases in the Czech Republic. Their energy prices will also rise by tens of percent.
kdu, TN.cz
2024-01-01 19:30:00
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