Electrical current: Retail tariffs announced Monday

With a new fall in wholesale, March ended. Retail tariffs for April will be announced tomorrow, but it is not given that we will have a new de-escalation according to the ERT, due to the complex method of calculating the price of kilowatt hours at retail level. The positive thing is that for the month of March 2024 a very large cycle is completed: The average wholesale electricity price for this month fell below 70 euros, to 67.54 from 73.61 in February, 93 in January, 102 in December. These price levels are extremely close to levels now before the energy crisis breaks out. And that takes us back to spring 2021. What is of course of interest is how much we will pay in April’s tariffs at retail level. What emerges at the moment is that if nothing changes at all in company pricing policy, we will have an increase and this is attributed to the way in which the retail price is calculated. This is due to the fact that the formula, beyond the absolute wholesale price, has to do with the final retail price and how much the wholesale price has changed over the previous month. So if things remain the same, then we will see the price of kilowatts at 11.6 minutes from 10.8 in March, for the highest consumptions at 12.75 from 11.90 and at the nightstand at 88.88 from 8.04. How can this be avoided if companies again decide this month to change their discount policy? March was a month’s reduction in the discount factor at nominal prices. If April becomes a month again to restore the discount to higher levels, we may not see these increases reflected tomorrow.