Pražská energetika announced an increase in the price of electricity for electric car chargers. E.On confirmed to the Aktuálně.cz editors that in this quarter they will also proceed with at least a slight increase in prices, ČEZ is evaluating the situation. Some prices will reach double compared to the beginning of last year, which means three times compared to 2020. Still, energy costs remain below the level of gasoline and diesel.
Starting in February, Prague Energy will raise the price of a kilowatt-hour for AC chargers by two crowns, and by three for DC chargers. At the same time, the company raised prices not only in the spring of last year, but then again in August.
The new PRE prices start at nine crowns for slow charging, twelve for fast chargers and fourteen for ultra-fast charging. The prices also apply to the chargers in the street lamps that PRE supplies for the capital. Customers of the PRE group, who also purchase energy at home or in the company, have prices one crown lower.
In 2020, however, they paid only three crowns per kilowatt hour. At that time, ČEZ offered registered customers a price of 4.50 crowns in some tariffs. Both with slow chargers and fast chargers.
“For a long time, we have been trying to maintain such prices for the public charging service that will enable the meaningful development of electromobility. However, in recent months we have all witnessed an unprecedented increase in energy prices in connection with the increase in the price of natural gas, emission allowances and the influence of other factors caused by the war in Ukraine. Price lists in unfortunately, the electromobility sector cannot ignore this development,” Martin Schreier from ČEZ wrote to the Aktuálně.cz editors. According to him, the company is monitoring the situation and will announce further steps in time.
Roman Šperňák from E.On is more specific. “Unfortunately, the development of prices on the energy exchanges is also reflected in the prices for charging electric cars in the public charging network. Although we manage not to project the market situation onto our customers in full, but only partially, we too will unfortunately have to proceed with adjustment of price lists”.
E.On has not yet published the final prices, but according to Šperňák, it will not be a major increase. For DC charging, it should be in the order of tens of pennies per kilowatt-hour at most.
The increase in the price of chargers reflects stock market prices and other energy trends. On the other hand, electric car users get better service for more money. While at the beginning of 2020 they had 170 fast charging stations available, today there are over seven hundred of them. In total, according to statistics from the Ministry of Transport, there are more than 1,200 public chargers in the Czech Republic.
Paradoxically, the rapid development of the network has its share in the rise in prices. This is because construction materials, labor and raw materials for the electrical components contained in each charger are more expensive.
Even after the announced changes, energy for an electric car will be cheaper than gasoline and diesel for an internal combustion engine. The electric Škoda Enyaq consumes eighteen kilowatt hours of energy per hundred kilometers, with the PRE fast charger for 198 crowns. Seven liters of diesel for the Kodiaq TDI currently costs 266 crowns.
In addition, the surge in demand for oil after the end of Asian lockdowns, as well as Russia’s reaction to price ceilings, may bring about further significant increases in gasoline and diesel prices.
