Electricity bill increased by half of the rest of Europe in September

According to data released this Wednesday by the Eurostat statistics office, Spain was the second largest European economy where the bill became cheaper, behind France, where the advance was 10.6% thanks to the cap imposed by the Gallic Government.

compared, electricity increased by an average of 36.7% per year European Union and up to 39.6% in the Euro AreaAlmost twice as much as in Spain.

Among the surrounding countries, Italy once again experienced the biggest increase in electricityslightly more than double that of a year ago, an increase of 103.4%; followed by Portugal (31.8%) and Germany (20.9%).

When the data of all Member States are analyzed, the Netherlands is the country with the highest increase in electricity, surpassing Estonia (105.6%) and Italy with an increase of 188%, almost three times the previous year; The least affected countries are Malta, Slovenia (0.9%) and Luxembourg (2.6%), where the price remained unchanged.

Gas cap and regulated rate

This limitation in the rhythm of the cost of the electricity bill in Spain – compared to the rest of Europe – contrasts with what has happened in the previous months and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February, as has Spain with Italy. Major European countries with the highest increase.

Thus, Eurostat estimated the increase experienced in Spain as 107.8% in March, which was gradually reduced to values ​​between 30% and 60% in line with tax cuts and approval of the gas cap.

This gas cap, enforced through the so-called Iberian mechanism, came into effect on June 15 and caps the price of gas for electricity generation in Spain and Portugal.

In the first months, the mechanism did not show the desired effect. higher temperatures, higher gas consumption and lower renewable generation.

Despite these conditions, the mechanism made it possible to limit the increase in electricity by more than 15% and has since set the average price at 254.6 euro/MWh compared to 300.6 and 419 payable without this mechanism. Italy, 380 from France and 329 from Germany.

Despite this, Spanish consumers are more exposed to changes in the wholesale electricity market, particularly around 11 million whose contracts are in the regulated market and therefore indexed to the daily price.

To avoid these variations, the Government is working on a new system to calculate the regulated electricity rate known as PVPC with the idea of ​​changing the price with reference to a particular day. The idea is to take three different time references: one monthly, one quarterly, and one annual average.