Electricity cheaper by 2.29%, butane by 4.6%

The Ministry of Industry has explained the lowering of the price of bottled gas as being due to the cheapening of propane and butane. Electricity will be cheaper for the first time since the market was released from a government-controlled monopoly and the setting up of a “bottom line” tariff, or (TUR) in 2009. This was thanks to the lowest prices obtained in a wholesale energy supply auction.

This is not the first time that the auction “Cesur” (at which electricity for the whole quarter of a year is auctioned at a fixed price), but it is the first time that this lowering of tariff has been passed on to the consumer.

This has happened because until now, if the cost of electricity had come down in the past, Central Government had counterbalanced it by putting up fixed costs on customers's bills in order to try and bring down the deficit - the Ministry for Industry said that the amount of money being provided by customers through their bill payments, doesn't match the electricity which power suppliers have provided.

Already, this difference between income and supply is more than 25'000 million euros.
The fixed costs on customer bills are set on a quarterly basis by Central Government to cover the operating costs of the electricity supply system, including facilities such as transport, distribution, the interests on the tariff decifit described earlier, and the cost of not using nuclear fuel.