Mini-extension to April 1 next year for the protected electricity market for micro-enterprises and non-domestic customers, a segment which thus also involves i condominiums.
L’He is nurturingthe Energy Authority, has moved the date of activation of the service to gradual protections for micro-enterprises and for the generality of non-domestic customers who – starting from 1 January 2023 – will no longer be able to be supplied permanently with the major service protection.
The stop of the protected market for condominiums had, in recent days, alarmed consumers. The protected market, it should be remembered, is the one that provides for the supply of electricity and gas with prices and contractual conditions defined by Arera itself. The legislation, which has been amended several times, has established that the protected product gradually disappears in favor of the free market. For the supply of electricity small and micro enterprises with committed power exceeding 15 kW, the price protection ended on 1 January 2021. The transfer of the other micro-enterprises is scheduled for 1 January 2023, in conjunction with the stop to the protection on gas supplies for households. Also for families, however, the end of the greater electricity protection has been postponed to 10 January 2024.
Condominiums, how much will be spent on the free market? Comparison of electricity tariffs
by Federico Ant
Now, the Arera specifies in a press release that in the period between 1 January 2023 and 1 April 2023 micro-enterprises and non-domestic customers (specifically condominiums) who have not yet chosen a vendor on the free market will be served temporarily still by its operator the greater protection, under the same active conditions, thus ensuring continuity of supply. This transitional phase “was necessary due to the postponement of more than two months of the dates for carrying out the tender procedures that should have assigned the service at the beginning of October 2022”, explains the Authority. Who recalls having already postponed the timing for the tender procedures due to the computer attack suffered by the GSE at the end of August. With the publication, by Acquirente Unico, of the tender regulations updated with the new dates, three months from the publication of the relative results are necessary for the transfer of customers to the new gradual protection operators.
In this period, however, non-residential customers will not be able to request return to the enhanced protection service if they already have a contract under free market conditions.
Dear bills, can the condominium remain without heating?
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At the novelty, theNational Consumer Union who had raised the case reacts by speaking of “excellent news”. However, he points out that “it is not enough”. After our complaint that condominiums were inexplicably considered micro-enterprises, “for them the date must be the same as that of families, i.e. January 10, 2024 and not April 1, 2023. For this reason, a modification of the Aiuti quater decree is urgently needed, which in addition to postponing the end of gas protection, as it has done, must also extend that for those who live in a building and who cannot be discriminated against just because they do not live alone”. “A shameful difference in treatment – observes the National Union of Consumers – It is absurd that there is a difference in the light of stairs, gardens, lifts, garages and cellars just for living in a villa or in a condominium. One an injustice that also affects voluntary associations”.
Also for the Codacons it is a right step, but an insufficient one. “The problem is that the high bills will make their effects felt also in 2023 and, considering the astronomical tariffs in force on the free market (+329% on an annual basis in October), we consider Arera’s provision insufficient: the market with the highest protection must be extended for the whole of 2023 and for all categories of users, including condominiums and micro-enterprises, in order to protect users from abnormal increases in energy tariffs”.