Most electricity suppliers forecast no price rise for households this year

Ljubljana – After Slovenia’s largest energy company Petrol announced earlier this week that it will increase the price of electricity in December, some predicted that other suppliers would follow, but most suppliers now forecast that their prices of electricity for households would not increase until next year.

However, most companies also said that increases could very well happen in 2022, as purchase prices of electricity are rising, having increased by more than 200% on international markets in the last year.

Gen-I, Slovenia’s largest electricity supplier with over 190,000 customers across Slovenia, told the STA that prices for their existing customers were to remain unchanged for now.

The same was said by ECE, the company created in a merger of Elektro Celje and Elektro Gorenjska, of which a 51% share was recently acquired by Holding Slovenske Elektrarne (HSE), the state-owned power company and the country’s largest producer of electricity from renewable sources.

“Prices will remain the same this year, but we will be forced to increase them next year, unless there is a significant reduction in prices on the upstream markets,” said ECE.

The Ljubljana-based Elektro Energija with more than 140,000 customers and Maribor’s Energija Plus, which supplies electricity to more than 120,000 customers, do not plan to raise electricity tariffs this year either.

“However, given the recent increases in energy prices on global markets, which are at historic highs, it is realistic to expect a correction in electricity and natural gas prices in the future,” they said.

This year has seen a sharp rise in energy prices predicted for 2022, 2023 and 2024. Electricity prices depend on many factors, including weather, carbon prices, supply, demand and political uncertainty.

The marginal price of electricity production has recently started to rise sharply and in early October, it exceeded the price of EUR 180 per megawatt-hour for next year in Hungary, the reference market for Slovenia.

According to current projections, the final amount on the electricity bill of the average consumer could be around 20% higher after the increase.

Energija Plus added that future prices would largely depend on other energy products, the availability of renewables, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the capacities of natural gas storage facilities in Europe and winter temperatures.

Reactions and debates on this matter followed Petrol’s announcement on Tuesday that it will increase the price of electricity by 30% from December. The final bill for the average household customer is expected to rise by just over 10%.

The issue of the rising energy prices on world markets was also brought to the attention of the government this week. They explained that the situation in the markets was abnormal and the result of several different factors.

The Infrastructure Ministry has taken note of the proposals for action presented by the European Commission, which they deemed not needed in Slovenia as of yet. However, Slovenia has convened an emergency meeting of EU energy ministers for 26 October.

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