Il free market for the supply of methane gas for domestic customers it started on January 10th. This should be good news because there are many competitors and therefore users, as has widely happened with fixed and mobile telephony services, should save money. Instead, the savings are minimal and limited only to the first 4 suppliers, out of 485 offers, which are found by doing a search with the specific comparative portal set up by He is nurturingi.e. the Energy Authority.
Use the comparison portal
From the tariff comparison portal, which asks you to enter some data such as the city the user belongs to, the annual consumption (found in old bills) and the type of meter, which in most cases is a G4 (unfortunately this item is not explained) it can be seen that with the annual consumption of the typical family (i.e. 1,400 cubic metres) in the protected variable price market the expense would be 1,597 euros per year, obviously the same for all managers. While in the free one the best rate is not offered by one of the major operators (such as Enel for example) but by Gala Spa, which promises a cost, according to the offer reported by the Arera portal, of 1,554 euros per year. In short, the saving of 35 euros per year is the maximum that the operators offer on the methane gas supply front.
Beware of low prices…
To complicate things, if you use an online comparator provided by one of the comparison companies operating in the sector such as Compara Semplice the result, unfortunately, changes. In this case the most convenient rate would be that of the company Italy gas and electricity, which would be equal, always using the same criteria, to 1,128 euros per year. In short, in this case the saving is significant but, going into the details of the tariff, we discover that the system charges are not included (indeed they are deducted) and have returned to weigh on the bill as well as the VAT which has gone from 5 to 22 % (at 10 but only up to the first approximately 480 cubic meters consumed).
Great confusion reigns
Another comparison site, Segugio.it, also offers updated rates on the VAT front. In this case the best supply is that of Argos. For 1,400 cubic meters the expected cost on the site would be 1,392 euros per year. But why are there different rates and managers on the comparison sites, including Arera’s? In addition to the reasons already mentioned, it must be considered that the comparison is based on projections of the variable price of the raw material. And therefore if these projections are made at lower prices it goes without saying that the annual rate will be better.
And therefore if the same criteria are not used for the comparison of tariffs for everyone, the operation is useless and complicated. very complicated. therefore it should be the Authority that establishes them and makes them intelligible for users otherwise, given the lack of transparency and the complicated items present in both gas and electricity bills, confusion will be generated.
For electricity, the transition from the protected to the free market is expected in July
Even in this case they were arranged flat rates, as for gas, but the customer who has not chosen a supplier on the free market will not be awarded the contract by the reference manager but by the company that won the auction for the geographical area where the user is located. The final results of these auctions, dominated by Enel and Hera, will be announced on February 6th. In this case the placet tariff, unlike what happened with gas, should still be better than the protected market given that the auctions were awarded on the downside but there are already those who suspect that, after a few months, these convenient tariffs could undergo increases.
All managers have increased prices
It should be underlined that, according to the Arera comparison portal, at the moment there is not even one electricity tariff (out of 272) better than those with greater protection. In this case the reason is simple: all the managers have raised the marketing price on the free market (around 120 euros per year), doubling that applied on the protected market. This affects the bill of the average user, who consumes 2700 kW per year, while it could benefit those who consume more by paying less for energy.