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Power lines in North Rhine-Westphalia
Photo: via www.imago-images.de / Manngold / IMAGO
I remember something from last week from a panel discussion on the Phoenix station that I took part in: The journalist Christian Geinitz said there that Olaf Scholz had set an industrial electricity price of four cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) as a goal during the election campaign. I was a bit floored - four cents. Shortly before the broadcast, our "Finanztip" energy expert Inesrutschmann had confirmed the current electricity price for new customers at the Pforzheim public utility company: 107 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity.
The head of the supervisory board of Stadtwerke Pforzheim is the CDU mayor Peter Boch.
But it wasn't because of party politics.
The Greens politician Verena Schlömer, for example, heads the supervisory board of Stadtwerke Düren (NRW).
The SPD mayor of the Rhenish city is also a member of the supervisory board.
At the same time, the supervisory board allowed the Düren municipal utility to pass a kilowatt-hour price of 99.8 cents, just under one euro.
From the customer's point of view, this is a fatal signal.
The large electricity consumers in industry should first get electricity ultra-cheaply, and in the crisis municipal electricity and gas suppliers then let the small customers who are thrown out of their previous contract through no fault of their own and end up with the local municipal utility pay more.
"In order not to slip into the red yourself," as it was said in Pforzheim.
The Consequences of Liberalization
Of course, German politicians cannot help the fact that prices have skyrocketed recently.
Because in fact, moon prices for electricity and gas, as they are currently being called by a number of suppliers, including many municipal utilities, are certainly a reaction to a veritable market crisis.
And that has nothing to do with new climate policy, but a lot with insufficient regulation of the electricity and gas market.
Both markets have been liberalized since the late 1990s. Numerous new electricity and gas traders joined the large suppliers and the many municipal utilities on the market, making energy cheaper for their customers, at least temporarily, with smaller margins. At the same time, those in government had taken precautions to the extent that in the event of a failure of one of these dealers, the main supplier in the region would have to take over the replacement supply for customers - that is what it means. So that the heating does not get cold and the refrigerator does not go out. In addition, these top dogs must also ensure a basic supply that absorbs every customer regardless of their creditworthiness and which - no wonder - is also a bit more expensive than the cheap offers that electricity and gas dealers and municipal utilities like to put in their shop windows.
Important here: The prices for the replacement supply must not be higher than in the normal basic supply, i.e. the tariff that all customers pay who have never tried to get a cheap contract (which is still surprisingly many).
This was to prevent poor customers who have just lost their contract supplier from being defenseless at the mercy of the local default supplier.
In addition, according to the supervisor, there is enough competition in this liberalized market so that stranded customers should find a new, affordable supplier within a very short time.
The calm of the authorities
The antitrust authorities are responsible for price control.
In 2008, the federal authority also initiated abuse proceedings against gas suppliers;
In the end, the companies paid back around 3.5 million customers 127 million euros - because the prices were too high.
The authorities are currently quiet when it comes to gas prices.
What antitrust authorities apparently could not have imagined: that some dealers and public utilities would still play Wild West with their customers.
But they do.
Over the years, some traders have mainly bought electricity and gas on the spot market, via the stock exchange group in Leipzig, all regulated by the respective federal government.
Electricity and gas have been incredibly cheap there in recent years.
And this inexpensive purchase helped the dealers (and also some municipal utilities) to make decent extra profits.
The supervisors watched, after all the traders always had the risk that prices on the spot market would rise and they would then have to pay more – entrepreneurial risk, so to speak.
In the current crisis, however, some of the traders did not even think of jeopardizing the nice profits of previous years.
Instead of honoring the contracts with their customers, they simply quit out of turn, with the outrageous justification that the disaster of the high prices could not have been foreseen.
Or they simply stopped delivering, were locked out by the network companies and thus crept out of the market - with the old profits.
The supervisors didn't do anything at first, after all, the consumer's hut wouldn't get cold and the electricity wouldn't go out, that's what the basic suppliers are there for.
And if some gas or electricity suppliers did not deliver, although they should have, the courts would clarify that.
Such supervisors probably think that hundreds of thousands of customers would now rush to their local courts and sue the nasty providers.
But customers don't do that.
Stadtwerke apparently know customers much better.
Assuming that those who had just been rescued would not immediately sue the rescuer again, they simply demanded moon prices from their new customers.
The Stadtwerke can still feel confirmed by the Cartel Office in Düsseldorf.
The industry association of electricity and gas providers BDEW quoted the Cartel Office in a letter to me as saying: »The result is also in the interest of consumers from the point of view of consumer protection.«
In line with the interests of municipal utilities, which are often municipally owned and where the head of the supervisory board is a mayor or district administrator.
GASAG in Berlin, one of the big players in the industry but not a local authority, had to deliver 1.5 percent more gas this winter because of stranded customers. The price for new customers was 18 cents per kWh, for existing customers it was 8 Cent.
GASAG also wrote to me that the antitrust authorities had rated this as permissible.
More than 300 basic suppliers take higher prices
GASAG is one of the largest gas suppliers in Germany, but with the doubling of prices it is not yet the most outrageous supplier.
Stadtwerke Pforzheim sometimes charged new customers 41.5 cents per kWh of gas (for more than 10,000 kilowatt hours of consumption) in the backup supply.
A spokesman for Stadtwerke wrote to me that the price was necessary to supply a four-digit number of new customers.
Before the crisis, it was 7 cents.
After a lot of public criticism, the municipal utilities are currently still charging 23 cents for gas.
As already mentioned, Stadtwerke Pforzheim had charged 107 cents per kWh for electricity, but they have now lowered the price to 55 cents.
Our energy expert at "Finanztip", Inesrutschmann, says that even with the crazy prices currently on the electricity and gas exchanges, a municipal utility should be able to get by with 35 to 40 cents for electricity and 10 to 15 cents for gas since January 2022 - the prices the energy exchanges have eased up a little and have fallen. However, some municipal utilities are not as quick to correct their prices downwards as they were with the increase. You can read here how such prices are calculated.
Let's take a closer look at the prices of the basic suppliers.
First with electricity: More than 300 basic suppliers in Germany now charge higher prices from new customers than from existing customers.
The current leader in our list is Stadtwerke Gütersloh with 92 cents per kilowatt hour.
Even if they want to lower the prices for new customers to 54 cents per kWh on February 1st in Gütersloh, that is still overpriced.
Here is a small selection of other basic suppliers with extra electricity prices for new customers.
The consumer center NRW has now warned at least three of these outrageous basic suppliers for their electricity prices: Rheinenergie and the Stadtwerke Wuppertal and Gütersloh.
When it comes to gas, the situation for customers is even more serious: gas consumption is highest in winter. If there are electricity bills of 100 euros a month, gas with the new moon prices can sometimes be 500 euros a month without higher consumption. The current leader in prices, Stadtwerke Schwäbisch Gmünd, charges old customers 8.25 cents per kilowatt hour of gas, while new customers charge an astronomical 38.6 cents per kilowatt hour (with consumption as is usual for gas heating).
What do you learn from this now as a customer: If the price for gas or electricity at the local public utility shoots up disproportionately, talk to the mayor and the local, regional or national media.
We at "Finanztip" are also happy to receive information about the most expensive electricity or gas city in the republic.
Until then, please do four things:
Write down the
meter reading
at which your old provider kicked you out.
You are then in the replacement care and after three months at the latest in the basic care.
Their central motive for another change is a
cheaper offer
.
Now use comparison calculators regularly until you find one.
This can always be an offer from the life-saving
basic supplier
, both the basic supply itself and a good offer with a price guarantee for the next twelve months.
You can find them in the »Finanztip« calculator, for example under the Other offers tab.
With the high prices, also consider switching multiple times.
You can cancel the replacement service immediately, or the basic service with a two-week notice.
If things have calmed down when you change suppliers, you can demand compensation
from the original supplier, who gave you extraordinary notice or stopped supplying you at short notice
.
Namely your additional costs for the time in which your old contract was actually still valid.
Gas.de has already offered flat-rate compensation to individual customers who are demanding compensation.
If he does not pay, you
remind
the provider for your claim for damages and put him in default in the classic way.
So you can increase the pressure and even claim interest on arrears.
And finally, hope with me that
antitrust authorities and mayors
realize that they have to act faster in crises like the current one and protect consumer contracts.
Because if treaties were no longer valid, we would indeed be in the Wild West.
And I think almost nobody wants that.
