Gas bills can arrive every month and no longer every two as is the case today. A sort of “de facto” installment payment that will make it easier to spread expenses over time and not burden too much on family budgets, now that the price of methane is literally skyrocketing.
The possibility provided by the Energy Authority
It is with this objective that the Energy Authority has provided for the new possibility of monthly billing for households who still access the protected market (approximately 7.3 million domestic customers, equal to over a third of the total 20.4 million ). By modifying the recent resolution of last July with which it established the new methods for updating the cost of raw materials, the Authority took into account “the need to provide for a greater frequency of billing within the scope of the protection service, so as to end customers to know their spending more frequently and to redistribute bill payments over several months ».
Arera’s decision to disengage from the Ttf in Amsterdam
In view of the start, on 1 October, of the next thermal year, the criticalities for sellers in finding the gas necessary to satisfy their customers, including domestic ones, are becoming more acute on the wholesale markets. Faced with the surge in gas prices, accentuated by the news that the Nord stream gas pipeline recorded “unprecedented” damage to three lines, to immediately intercept any national and European price containment initiatives, the Arera had already decided to completely disengage from the Ttf in Amsterdam, no longer using the forward prices of the international wholesale market as a reference, but the average of the actual prices of the Italian PSV market.
From this autumn monthly update of the rates
The updating of tariffs will therefore become monthly from this autumn, no longer quarterly and will be ex post and no longer ex ante as has happened up to now, thus separating the price variations relating to electricity from those on gas. At the end of this month, only the electricity tariffs will be updated for the usual three months, while to establish the gas price for the month of October alone, we will have to wait until the first days of November. At the same time, if ready, companies will be able to invoice on a monthly basis and no longer bimonthly.
The reaction of consumer associations
A decision to update the bills monthly, which was taken after a specific consultation at the suggestion of the National Consumer Union and which integrates the one that arrived in the summer, in full explosion of prices, with the aim of making supplies safer. And if the opening of the Arera is judged an important step forward by the UNC, which proposed it, the other consumer associations express perplexity. The Codacons sees possible new aggravations and announces an appeal to the TAR. Non-profit consumerism, on the other hand, fears “an avalanche of maxi-balances”.