To reduce your bill, it will be better, in the future, to spread out your consumption and avoid running everything at peak times. Not for everyone, critic Déi Lénk.
The government plans an envelope of 171 million euros in 2025 to partly compensate for the increase in the price of electricity which is due to take place on January 1, 2025. Without state aid, the increase would reach 60%, while It will be limited to 30% through this mechanism.
Last September, Minister Lex Delles announced to deputies that the aid would make it possible to stabilize the price at 28.2 cents per kilowatt hour instead of 34.7 cents without the latter for so-called “domestic” customers, those whose annual consumption does not exceed 25,000 kWh. The price is currently 21.8 cents per kilowatt hour. The announced increase worries Déi Lénk, even after the explanations from the Regulatory Institute (ILR) which are intended to be reassuring concerning the new tariff structure on the low-voltage electricity market.
“In the immediate future, this change will have little impact on the vast majority of consumers, especially since the main variable is still the price of electricity strictly speaking, and not the tariff for using the network” , according to the ILR. But later? This pricing structure aims for greater efficiency in the use of networks. Thus, network users are invited to be flexible in terms of their consumption by extending it over time and limiting simultaneous uses. The ILR believes that the new tariff structure will be fairer as it reflects the real costs of using the network. “Some users should pay less and others more for their use of the network based on their consumption behavior,” explains the ILR.
“But this also poses a certain number of problems,” warns déi Lénk in return. Not all households, far from it, can spread their electricity consumption over the day so that the network is not overloaded during peak hours. The left-wing opposition party fears that many households will be unable to change their electricity consumption habits. This primarily concerns people who return from work early in the evening and who must therefore consume maximum energy during peak hours. “The reference to intelligent and remotely programmable devices is certainly a good option, but these devices are too expensive for many households,” says déi Lénk.
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It is not only the oven and the washing machine that are used at peak times, but also the heat pumps and the charging of the electric car. “Peak consumption is calculated by the supplier based on household consumption over recent years. It may have been low in many cases, but could increase in 2025 if an electric car has been acquired or if the heating has been replaced by a heat pump. These households could be faced with higher electricity prices,” warns the Left.
The party considers it particularly problematic that the new electricity prices come at the same time as the partial end of the price cap. “Prices will increase anyway from January and the effect of the new tariff will de facto be avoided on electricity bills. This is not only opaque, but also does not make it possible to popularize another consumption of electricity.” Déi Lénk is not opposed in principle to different electricity prices. “We have long called for tiered prices for water and energy to ensure reasonable consumption. This is not the case with the tariff which comes into force on January 1, it will not encourage energy savings and will not take into account total consumption, but only the time of consumption.
The regulator should pay more attention to saving electricity, according to the opposition party which suggests, at the same time, “turning off digital advertising surfaces and window lighting during peak hours”. He considers it “absurd” that a family pays more for electricity if they want to run their dishwasher in the evening after dinner, “while a Luxair advertisement lights up the street in front of the house”.
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