Gas prices drop, will bills change too? The whole truth

Finally, raw material fees have been lowered and everyone is breathing a sigh of relief after the past months’ blows on gas.

Who would have thought that because The war in Ukraine Have we found ourselves with exorbitant bills on our hands? But after a year of emergency and deepening crisis, with the gas taps shut in Russia, a welcome surprise lies in the price of gas, which has finally reached the floor for sale today.

In fact, as of 2021, the Dutch TTF, Europe’s main virtual reference market for gas trading, headquartered in Amsterdam, has set bid prices at €48.9 per MWh. An incredible figure if you count a few months, when the peak was in August 340 euros per megawatt hour! But how does all this translate?

What everyone is wondering is how the change in the cost of gas will translate practically to the bill. How much will we actually save? The answer is that in order to get a real reaction to consumption, it will be necessary to wait some time. In fact, it will take some time to adjust tariffs. Change does not happen automatically and there are fundamental differences between them protected market And the free market.

Low prices for raw materials and gas: this is the case with the bills

But what are the differences in the bill for users in the free market and users in the protected market? For the protected market, Arera, the Energy, Networks and Environment Regulatory Authority, has set light tariffs to reduce it 19.5% From January to March. With the new tariffs that will be applicable to those who remain in the protected market for the first three months of 2023.

But the situation is different for gas. Since October, the authority has confirmed the possibility of issuing monthly bills, not quarterly, as is the case for electricity. By calculating gas prices on the monthly average of those recorded in the Italian wholesale market, the reference is the Psv index, i.e. Virtual trading point. This is where natural gas is exchanged or sold, and the meeting point between gas supply and demand in Italy, which is also declining, no longer the Amsterdam TTF index.

But what does this mean? In practice, we are seeing the first price cuts for end users with a decrease of 34.2% compared to December 2022. But we are still far from pre-crisis levels. However, the situation is different for clients Free market. If you stipulate or subscribe to a fixed-rate electricity or gas contract, this means that you will pay the same amount, after deducting depreciation that can change, for a certain period of time stipulated in the contract.

Generally this is a period of one, two or three years. If you choose the indexing option, which can be on a monthly basis, you are “victims” market changes which contains the PSV gas price as a reference, but is also sometimes linked to the Dutch TTF. In this case, the bills could have more reasonable amounts starting in March.