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Power poles: Tariffs are often opaque
Photo:
Armin Weigel / dpa
These days, electricity and gas providers have to write to their customers how they calculate the savings from the electricity and gas price brake and how much the customers actually save.
But when the price brakes start, two problems arise:
Firstly, many of the suppliers did
not finish
the letters to their customers on time.
This means that companies cannot check the calculation of the savings in advance and have errors corrected.
In the case of providers such as the E.ON subsidiary Eprimo, the calculation of future discounts is apparently going catastrophically wrong.
A scrutiny is therefore necessary.
Second, the suspicion that some providers are artificially inflating
the cost per kilowatt hour for customers
because they can charge taxpayers for the difference beyond the price brakes is becoming more and more common.
Frightening empiricism
The law on the electricity and gas price brake as well as the paragraphs on district heating provide for a simple mechanism (to be found in EWPBG § 3 paragraph 3 , EWPBG § 11 paragraph 4 and StromPBG § 12 paragraph 2 ):
The provider will write to the affected customers by February 15th what previous year's consumption it uses as a basis for calculating the price brake, how high the price-capped consumption is in 2023 and how high the cheaper discount is that can be calculated from it.
Simple divide and multiply actually.
The groups should have already practiced the billing for industrial customers, because the mechanism has been in effect there since January.
However, the majority of providers did not finish the billing on February 15, which was intended for this purpose.
Some also threaten to tear the last deadline provided by the legislature of March 1st.
This is incomprehensible.
It is true that millions of customers will benefit from the price brakes.
Gasag in Berlin, for example, speaks of 700,000 customers, EnBW of several hundred thousand, Mainova of 90 percent of its one million customers and Montana of the "large majority" of its 600,000 customers.
But the intellectual effort for the suppliers is manageable, the Ministry of Economics has even presented sample letters for the energy suppliers:
And a good number of customers could have been told that they do not benefit from the brakes at all because their prices are below the cap of 40 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for electricity and 12 cents per kWh for gas.
For example, those among the 1.4 million electricity customers of Vattenfall in Berlin who have a contract for twelve or 24 months.
They pay well under 40 cents, while basic service customers pay 41.4 cents and benefit a bit from the price brake.
Or two thirds of the customers at Stadtwerke Osnabrück.
Their work prices are lower than the price brake requires, i.e. under 40 cents/kWh for electricity and under 12 cents/kWh for gas.
For the remaining 60,000 customers, however, Stadtwerke Osnabrück is still unable to calculate and initially only lowers the deductions across the board.
What sounds simple for the individual contract is "highly complex in mass business with its variety of tariffs," according to the municipal utility.
At the taxpayer's expense
more on the subject
Subsidies for gas and electricity price brakes: the federal government saves billions thanks to the energy price crashBy Claus Hecking and Gerald Traufetter
The electricity and gas suppliers can recover the costs that customers save through the price brakes from the state.
The Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection has commissioned the auditing company PwC with the payment.
A PwC spokesman told me on Tuesday that the auditors do not want to reveal how this is supposed to work in detail.
As an auditor, you are not allowed to say anything about client relationships.
It would be interesting to see how PwC checks the applications for reimbursement before the state money is paid out.
Just two examples:
Stadtwerke Münster's electricity price for basic supply is below 40 cents/kWh.
Therefore, they do not have to write to all basic supply customers for electricity, because the electricity price brake does not apply to them.
According to the contract, customers who purchase green electricity at a special rate from the municipal utility have to pay between 50 and 60 cents per kWh.
The public utilities can get a large part of the high costs from the taxpayer via PwC.
Why green electricity is so expensive - after all, the wind is blowing and the sun doesn't send an invoice - is not examined.
And the customers don't have to worry either, after all they save thanks to the electricity price brake.
The Federal Network Agency does not check the bills from electricity and gas providers either.
A spokesman wrote to me that the providers are "banned from structuring their prices or any other behavior that represents an abusive exploitation of the regulation to relieve end consumers under the price brake laws".
However, the Federal Network Agency is not responsible for monitoring abuse.
In the event of suspicion, the Federal Cartel Office would have to take care of that.
So the following question remains unanswered: Is it actually abuse when the electricity and gas provider Eprimo charges existing customers 24.42 cents per kWh in its gas tariff (“your previous price guarantee expires”), but new customers in the same tariff charge a price of 12.15 cents/kWh?
I have the relevant letters.
Here, too, the taxpayer would have to shell out the price difference – if the specific customer weren’t so angry that he stopped this scam and switched providers.
And now you!
So what can you do specifically?
1) First, check whether gas, electricity or district heating brakes work for you at all.
Do you pay more than 12, 40 or 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour gross (including VAT)?
If not, have a nice weekend.
The price brake is not relevant for you.
2) If so, look up the statements from previous years:
a.
The last annual electricity bill, probably from 2022;
b.
the last annual gas bill before September 2022, probably from 2021;
c.
and if you are a district heating customer, also the last annual district heating bill before September 2022.
3) Find the annual consumption and multiply the number by 0.8.
That's 80 percent.
Then you will know which part of your consumption of electricity, gas and district heating you can get cheaper.
And which not.
4) Compare the price that your provider charges per kilowatt hour without a brake with the price brake.
How big is the difference?
Multiply the cent result by the number of kilowatt hours that you get cheaper.
If your electricity costs 50 cents/kWh from the provider and you should get 2400 kWh cheaper (namely for 40 cents/kWh), then that would be 2400 times 10 cents, making 240 euros.
5) Divide the result by 12. Now you know how much money you can save by using the brakes each month with the same consumption and by how much your discount should decrease – by 20 euros in this example.
For January and February, your provider will receive money from the state, which he should also credit you with as a discount in March.
Your deduction should therefore be particularly low in March: In our example, it is a one-time reduction of 60 euros than before.
From April, the new deduction, which is 20 euros lower in this example, will then apply.
Nobody can take the discount away from you until the price brake expires at the end of 2023 - or until April 2024 if the federal government uses the extension option.
If your provider increases the prices in between, your discount will also increase.
And if you have saved a lot of electricity or gas, you will get a lot of money back in the annual bill - the price of the provider for each kilowatt hour saved.
If your provider is stuck or the figures on the notification letter are clearly incorrect, you should contact them.
Tell him you will lower the discount according to your own calculation.
You can often correct the deduction yourself on the provider's website.
If this is not possible and the provider has calculated an incorrect reduction, file an objection.
Here is the financial tip sample letter for it.
Always remember: The down payment you pay is based on a reasonable suggestion from your provider to split the annual bill over 12 months.
At the end you have to pay the sum of the annual statement.
If the provider collects the advance payment by direct debit, insist that they change the direct debit amount from March.
However, if you pay by standing order or invoice, you have to change the standing order or the individual transfer yourself.
Do that!
I wish you success!