Due to the high energy costs, the government has set an energy ceiling. But what exactly? How does the energy ceiling work and how does the price ceiling work?
Next year you can use 2900 kWh of electricity and 1200 m3 of gas. Within that quantity, the standard amount will be 0.40 euros per kWh of electricity and 1.45 euros per m3 of gas. That means a maximum of 1160 euros in electricity and 1740 euros in gas, but then you have to comply with the rules.
Is the rate in the contract lower than the rate of the price cap? Then the rate from the contract applies to the total consumption. So no one is more expensive. The price cap applies to both variable and fixed contracts.
However, you have to be careful, because you are not allowed to burn everything through on January 1. How much you are allowed to use depends on the date of the annual accounts of your energy company.
For example, if you receive your annual accounts exactly on the middle day of the year (2 July), you may use 708.27 m3 of gas and 1445.52 kWh of electricity in the first half of the year. You then still have more than 491 m3 of gas and more than 1454 kWh of electricity left for the second half of the year.
To arrive at those quantities, the government uses an amount that you can use per day. On 1 January, for example, a maximum of 11.32 kWh of electricity and 7.17 m3 of gas may be used, but on 27 August it is 6.44 kWh and 0.60 m3. It is not the case that if you exceed your daily amount per day, you already have to pay. So you can compensate a day with a lot of consumption with a day with less consumption. As long as both days fall within your payment period.
If your account starts on 1 January, you have the whole year to use up your gas and electricity buffer. Adding the daily quantities together yields what you can consume approximately per month.