By Gunnar Schupelius
In the summer of 2021, the Senate bought the Berlin power grid from Vattenfall, thereby keeping the electricity price stable. Instead, the price increases because of the network fees, of all things. A major political promise has been broken, says Gunnar Schupelius.
The price of electricity in Berlin is rising and rising. The basic supplier Vattenfall calculates: “From February 1, 2023, an average household in Berlin will pay around 17 euros more per month.” This corresponds to an increase of 25 percent.
Vattenfall describes a household with an annual electricity consumption of 2200 kilowatt hours as average. The consumption price increases from 33.12 cents/kWh to 41.41 cents/kWh, the basic price increases from 7.49 euros a month to 9.50 euros a month.
Vattenfall denies any blame for the price jump and points the finger at others, especially Stromnetz Berlin GmbH. This company, which operates the city’s power grid, increased “the charges for grid usage” by 26.5 percent as of January 1.
According to its own information, Stromnetz Berlin raised the “working price” for the transmission of electricity on January 1, from 6.59 cents/kWh to 8.93 cents per kilowatt hour.
Further increases are likely. As justification, the company wrote to us that they had to buy expensive electricity and that the investment costs had skyrocketed.
These are very general statements, they do not shed any light on the price increase. And the whole truth is not told here either. It looks like this: In the summer of 2021, the capital’s power grid was nationalized. The Senate bought Stromnetz Berlin GmbH from Vattenfall for 2.14 billion euros and financed the purchase with loans.
These loans have to be repaid with around 100 million euros per year, for which Stromnetz Berlin has to make a profit. The Senate campaigned for nationalization with the argument that prices would then be able to remain stable. Instead, they are now rising.
Citizens should be protected against rising prices. The federal government promises an electricity price brake: from 40 cents/kWh, the costs will be reimbursed (since January 1st). The Senate goes one step further and offers help for households with low incomes with the “Energy Debt Hardship Fund”. “We will not leave Berliners alone in this crisis,” said Governing Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD).
This policy could not be more contradictory: on the one hand you are fighting against the rising price of electricity and on the other hand you are increasing it yourself.
This applies not only to the Senate, but also to the federal government. In addition to the grid fee, the cost driver is the “offshore surcharge”, a subsidy for wind farms that is added to the electricity price. This is what the Energy Industry Act wants (§17f, Paragraph 5).
Electricity production, which used to work well for the private sector, is being transferred to a state planned economy and is now becoming more and more expensive. No wonder, because the planned economy (this is what history teaches us) has never worked.
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