How expensive your electricity is also depends on where you live. The price of electricity fluctuates by up to 25 percent between federal states. For families, this can make a difference of more than 400 euros per year.
Anyone who has an average electricity tariff in Thuringia is currently not to be envied. According to a current analysis by Check24, singles with an annual consumption of 1,500 kilowatt hours pay 741 euros a year, families with 5,000 kilowatt hours of consumption even pay 2,079 euros. Both are the top values among the German federal states. Only Baden-Württemberg and Saarland come close to this value at 708 and 693 euros for singles and 1,945 and 1,941 euros for families.
On average, electricity costs in Germany are currently 659 euros for singles and 1,830 euros for families. The most significantly lower is Bremen, where people living alone only have to spend 583 euros and families of four get away with 1,662 euros per year. Other cheapest federal states are Lower Saxony, Berlin and Bavaria.
The differences between the regions are high. The electricity bill in Thuringia is around 25 percent higher than that in Bremen. For singles this makes a difference of 158 euros per year and for families even 417 euros. Overall, electricity prices have already fallen significantly. A year ago the national average was ten percent higher than today. This trend is likely to continue in the coming months, as electricity prices on the exchange are already 34 percent lower than a year ago. However, these savings are always passed on to customers with delays because many electricity suppliers are still supplying electricity quotas that they bought a few months ago at the market prices that were still higher at the time.
The fact that there are such strong differences between the federal states is not due to the electricity costs themselves. Although the production of electricity from renewable energies such as wind and solar is significantly cheaper and is not evenly distributed in Germany, there are both federal states with high shares of renewable energies Thuringia has high electricity costs, while some countries with low shares of renewable energy, such as North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony, still offer average electricity prices.
The network fees are more important for the differences, because ultimately the cheap wind power from the north has to be distributed throughout the country. Operators are allowed to charge certain fees for the use and expansion of the electricity network. Although they are the same nationwide, they are distributed among fewer consumers in sparsely populated federal states, so that higher costs arise per household. “Around a quarter of the electricity price is accounted for by network fees,” says Steffen Suttner, Managing Director for Energy at Check24, adding that these have risen sharply this year, especially in Thuringia. You currently pay the highest in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg. Overall, the network fees in the eastern federal states are higher per consumer, which is why electricity costs here are also higher on average.
The average electricity price is the average of the basic supplier tariffs and the alternative tariffs. In basic supply tariffs, a kilowatt hour currently costs significantly more. This is because primary care providers are committed to adopting a safer purchasing strategy. They purchase larger quotas of electricity on the exchange, which are then passed on to customers over a long period of time. Since exchange electricity prices are currently falling, basic suppliers are selling even more expensive quotas from the past few months – meaning their tariffs are higher. 121 basic suppliers even raised their prices slightly in April.
Alternative providers, on the other hand, purchase electricity quotas at shorter notice and can therefore now pass on the falling prices to their customers more quickly. So if you switch providers from basic care now, you can save a lot of money. Check24 estimates the potential in the 100 largest cities in Germany to be around 40 percent on average.
As much as you can benefit from the lower prices of alternative providers now, you have to be careful when prices rise again. These providers will then quickly pass on the price increases on the stock exchange to you. Customers in the basic supply will then continue to benefit for months from the fact that their provider purchased quotas when electricity was still cheaper. A simple switch back to the basic service is possible if there is a special right of termination due to price increases by the alternative provider. The basic rule is: You can usually get out of basic service within a few weeks, with other providers the contract term is significantly longer.
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