These days, electricity and gas suppliers have to tell their customers how they will calculate the savings from the electricity and gas price brakes and how much customers will actually save. However, two problems arise at the start of the price brakes:
Firstly, many of the suppliers have not finished writing to their customers in time. This means that the companies cannot check the calculation of savings in advance and have errors corrected. In the case of suppliers such as the E.ON subsidiary Eprimo, the calculation of future discounts is apparently going disastrously wrong. A scrutinizing look is therefore necessary.
Secondly, there is a growing suspicion that some suppliers are keeping the costs per kilowatt hour artificially high for customers because they can charge the taxpayers for the difference beyond the price brakes.
The Electricity and Gas Price Brake Act and the sections on district heating provide for a simple mechanism (to be found in EWPBG Section 3 (3), EWPBG Section 11 (4) and StromPBG Section 12 (2) ):
However, the majority of providers did not complete their billing by the deadline of February 15. Some are also threatening to miss the final deadline of March 1 set by the legislator.
So what can you do in concrete terms?
1) First of all, check whether the gas, electricity or district heating brake applies to you at all. Do you pay more than 12, 40 or 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour gross (i.e. including VAT)? If not, have a nice weekend. The price brake is not relevant for you.
2) If so, look for the statements from previous years:
a. The last annual electricity bill, probably from 2022;
b. the last annual gas invoice before September 2022, probably from 2021;
c. and if you are a district heating customer, also the last annual district heating bill before September 2022 .
3) Determine your annual consumption and multiply the figure by 0.8, which is 80 percent. Then you know which part of your electricity, gas and district heating consumption you can get cheaper. And which not.
4) Compare the price your supplier charges per kilowatt hour without the price brake with the price brake. How high is the difference? Multiply the result in cents by the number of kilowatt hours that you get cheaper. If your electricity costs 50 cents/kWh from your supplier and you should get 2400 kWh cheaper (namely for 40 cents/kWh), then that would be 2400 times 10 cents, or 240 euros.
5) Divide the result by 12. Now you know how much money you will save each month with the brake if your consumption remains the same and by how much your discount should fall - by 20 euros in this example.
Your provider receives money from the state for January and February, which it should credit to you as an additional discount in March. Your discount should therefore be particularly low in March: In our example, a one-off 60 euros lower than before.
The new, lower discount will then apply from April. No one will be able to take the discount away from you until the price brake expires at the end of 2023 - or until April 2024 if the German government decides to extend it.
If your supplier raises prices in the meantime, your discount also increases. And if you have saved a lot of electricity or gas, you will get a lot of extra money back on your annual bill - the supplier's price for every kilowatt hour you save.
If your provider does not come out of the kink or his figures on the announcement letter are clearly incorrect, you should contact him. Let them know that you would reduce the discount according to your own calculation. You can often correct the discount yourself on the provider's website. If this is not possible and the provider has calculated an incorrect reduction, file an objection. You can find the Finanztip sample letter for this here.
Always remember: the discount you pay is based on a reasonable proposal from your provider to split the annual bill over twelve months. In the end, you have to pay the total of the annual bill.
If the provider collects the installment by direct debit, insist that they change the direct debit amount from March. However, if you pay by standing order or invoice, you must change the standing order or the individual transfer yourself.
Source: (Full article on spiegel.de)