2023-06-13 13:52:54
The Government has given the ‘green light’ to the approval of a new regulated electricity tariffthe so-called Voluntary Price for Small Consumers (PVPC), with which it seeks to protect electricity consumers from future episodes of price volatility, such as those experienced last year by the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.
Specifically, the Council of Ministers, proposal of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challengehas approved a Royal Decree that modifies the calculation methodology of the regulated electricity rate, which will foreseeably be published this Wednesday in the Official State Gazette (BOE), with which it seeks to provide more stability to bills final consumers giving progressively greater weight to futures markets.
This new formula will enter into force as of January 1, 2024 for consumers through the application on their invoices (they will not have to do anything to benefit from these changes), thus partially incorporating long-term price signals, addressing a partial de-indexation of spot markets, by including references of the future markets that will give, in the opinion of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, more stability to these final receipts from users.
Nevertheless, the entry into force of the new design for the reference marketers (COR), those designated by the Government and that are obliged to supply the regulated tariff, It will be from this July 1, in order to address the prices of the futures basket.
In this way, the Executive buries the PVPC, to which they are about nine million households linkedincluding the 1.5 million that receive the social bonus, as it has been known to date, which was created in 2014 by the PP government and which, indexed to the daily prices of the Iberian Electricity Market (Mibel), it had been the cheapest option for small consumers since its creation, when it was approached as a reform of the electricity tariff due to the problems of the Cesur auctions.
The change acts on the volatility, not on the price
Sources from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge consider that what has happened with the crisis caused by the war in Ukraine is an episode that could be repeated in the future, since the marginal weight of fossil fuels will be decreasing. but geopolitical phenomena are going to occur that will cause these price crises, which is why this new measure, one of the commitments also of the Government with the European Commission when the go-ahead was received application of the so-called ‘Iberian exception’ for Spain and Portugalit makes all the sense.
However, the same sources, who did not specify estimates of a possible impact on the electricity bill of the new methodology, stressed that the objective of the reform is to act on this volatility, although it is not so clear that it will do so on price levels, by introducing this greater weight to prices in the long term.
With this reform of the PVPC, a partial indexation of the spot markets is carried out, by incorporating references from future markets that will provide greater stability to the final bills of consumers.
The weight of the futures markets will progressively increaserepresenting 25% in 2024, 40% in 2025 and already reaching 55% as of 2026, while spot indexing will thus gradually lose its weight, going from 75% next year to 45% at the end.
Meanwhile, the futures market price references will be made up of a basket of term products with different time horizons: 10% would correspond to the monthly product, 36% to the quarterly product and 54% to the annual product.
However, heThe new methodology will maintain the hourly price signal by preserving the differential resulting from the daily market matching, which will contribute to encourage efficient consumption patterns to take advantage of the cheaper hours, they added in the Ministry.
Likewise, a volume risk premium component has been introduced in order to guarantee economic balance for the reference marketers.
New rate only for households and micro-SMEs with a contracted power less than or equal to 10 kilowatts (kW)
On the other hand, in compliance with Directive 2019/944 of the internal electricity market, as of January 1, 2024, only households and micro-SMEs will be able to benefit from the regulated rate -which will have to certify their condition through a responsible declaration- with a contracted power less than or equal to 10 kilowatts (kW).
In this way, all those consumers who are not included in these two groups will be expelled from the PVPC, although it will also be gradually and they can continue, initially, supplying the PVPC but with a 20% surcharge.
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