Energy company Helen's customer service was congested on Thursday, when the next day's exchange electricity prices were published.
Friday record high electricity prices made many exchange electricity customers panic and try to get rid of their current electricity contracts.
On Thursday, about 3,000 of the customers of the energy company Helen changed their exchange electricity contracts to another type of contract, says the director of Helen's Customers and Services business Anu-Elina Hintsa.
They could save a long penny, at least for Friday.
When you change the contract within your own electricity company, the new type of contract may come into effect very quickly. At Helen, in a contract change situation, the new contracts came into effect at the turn of the day, Hintsa says.
Thousands of Helen's former exchange electricity customers avoided Friday's exorbitant prices. On Friday, stock exchange electricity cost an average of 1.1 euros per kilowatt hour. At its highest, the price rose to 2.35 euros.
In Helen's cheapest fixed-term contract, according to the price comparison maintained by the Energy Agency, electricity is currently sold at a price of 9.39 cents per kilowatt hour. The contract includes a price flexibility element.
The average price of exchange electricity on Friday is therefore almost 12 times compared to Helen's cheapest contract.
Hintsan According to Helen, it offers the opportunity to quickly change the electricity contract, because it is good customer service.
“We have felt that it is in the customer's interest that they have the opportunity to make changes. When the customer is in a buying situation and wants to change the electricity contract quickly, allowing it is good customer service,” says Hintsa.
However, the company does not encourage its customers to change their contracts every now and then, but to consider which contract is the most suitable for them.
According to Hintsa, Thursday's contract changes will not cause any major costs for the company, when the amount is compared to Helen's total number of customers.
When Friday's electricity prices were published on Thursday at two in the afternoon, it caused an uncontrollable rush to Helen's customer service.
At its worst, during the afternoon, 200 customers were queuing at the electricity company's phone service at the same time, Hintsa says.
The majority wanted to change their electricity contract from exchange electricity to fixed-price fixed-term contracts or flexible fixed-term electricity contracts. In them, the price can decrease or increase depending on whether electricity use is focused on the cheap or expensive hours of exchange electricity.
An electrically heated detached house can consume around 100 kilowatt hours of electricity per day. In this case, heating the house would cost 110 euros per day at an average price of 1.1 euros. The change to a fixed-term contract has brought significant savings to electric heaters, because at a price of 9.39 cents, heating a single-family house would cost around 9.4 euros per day. The flexibility effect of the contract has not been calculated.
According to Hintsa, about a quarter of Helen's customers have a stock exchange electricity contract. The share has grown significantly since before the energy crisis, when around five percent of the company's customers relied on exchange electricity.
In recent weeks, according to Hintsa, consumers have moved more towards fixed-term contracts.
“For those who are not used to exchange electricity users, changes in prices like the last few days have reminded them of the times when they had a fixed-price contract,” says Hintsa.
Thursday in the afternoon, the use of Helen's Oma Helen application also exploded. The company's customers can use the application to monitor not only exchange electricity prices, but also their own electricity consumption.
Typically, you will see two spikes in app usage, one in the morning and one in the afternoon when the next day's prices are published.
“Yesterday [torstaina] we noticed that when the prices were announced, the number of visitors quadrupled from the normal usage peak,” says Hintsa.
The application could not withstand the sudden spike in the number of users and crashed. On Friday, the application was working normally again.
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