When the fixed-term electricity contract ends, the consumer currently has only poor options. On the other hand, many who signed a contract last year are protected from wild price increases.
Power the price increase is now testing Finns in an exceptional way – and in some cases almost randomly. When you sign a contract with the electricity company can affect your electricity bill by up to thousands of euros per year. In practice, there may be apartments next to each other in the neighborhood where one pays multiple times for electricity compared to the neighbor, even if the contract was made with the same company.
Even a year ago, you could get a fixed-term contract for less than six cents per kilowatt hour. In the best case, in addition to the price based on electricity consumption, the contracts did not even have a monthly fee to be billed on top. Currently, the prices of fixed-term contracts start at 30 cents per kilowatt hour, and on top of that, the companies charge a monthly fee of around 3–4 euros.
Those who signed a 24-month or even 36-month fixed-term electricity contract a year ago are small lottery winners. There are a large number of these lucky ones, because in recent years an increasingly large part of the contracts have been tied to a clearly cheaper price than today.
At work in 2008, electricity contracts were even cheaper, even less than five cents per kilowatt hour. Now that these two-year contracts are expiring, the consumer has only bad options, and entering into a new fixed-term contract inevitably multiplies the price of the electricity bill.
Another option is to make a contract based on the hourly electricity exchange price. In August, the stock exchange price has been almost double compared to the average for the whole year, and we have had to pay an average of more than 30 cents per kilowatt hour, including taxes. Last Friday night the price would go up momentarily almost one euro per kilowatt hour, which meant that, for example, an hour and a half sauna with an electric stove cost almost eight euros.
One can only guess the price of stock exchange electricity in the coming winter months. On the other hand, the contract can be terminated at any time, but after that the consumer may be faced with concluding an even more expensive fixed-term contract.
Third the alternative is an electricity contract valid for an indefinite period, in which case the electricity price is usually checked every few months. Only a handful of companies offer them to new customers, and the prices are not exactly cheaper than fixed-term contracts. In addition, the electricity companies are updating the prices of the contracts now. For old customers, the increases have been up to hundreds of percent at their worst.
This week, at least Helen, Tampereen Sähkölaitos and Turku Energia told about the steep price increases. For example, Turku Energia no longer offers new customers contracts other than those based on the stock market price, because the price of electricity is currently almost impossible to predict.
“It’s going to be a really hard winter for those who don’t have old electricity contracts. Prices will multiply in new electricity contracts”, Turku Energia’s sales director Harry Salo told HS on Thursday.
Read more: Electricity companies in big cities raise prices for existing customers: The increases are up to hundreds of percent
Below with the calculator you can calculate how much it might cost to upgrade your current electricity contract to a new fixed-term contract.
The calculator does not take into account the monthly contract payments or the electricity transmission fee, which is paid to the company in whose grid area the consumer lives. The price of electricity transmission is not affected by the current energy crisis. In the calculator, you can make a comparison both with example apartments and according to the actual annual electricity consumption.
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