Not all customers will see electricity prices go down next year. While households can look forward to a slight decrease in electricity prices next year, the corporate sector must expect a further increase in energy costs. The network access fee will increase from 3% to 20%.
Moreover, costs for ancillary services will jump up to 195% for some customer groups. Households owe the slight drop in electricity prices to the agreement between the state with Slovenske Elektrarne on baseload supply at a capped price of 61 euros per megawatt hour.
However, as the Association of Industrial Unions and Transport (APZD) reported, companies have to buy electricity on the market at a price that is on average 50 to 60% higher than what households pay.
„Further growth in electricity prices due to network fees represents a fundamental problem, especially for production companies that face high competition from countries outside the EU,“ pointed out APZD Secretary General Andrej Lasz. According to him, not only the automotive industry, but also other branches of industry in Slovakia still have to grapple with the global decline in consumption, and thus also the demand for their products.
„In a situation where, in order to preserve production and employment, it is crucial to be competitive not only in terms of quality, but also in terms of product price, network access fees are increased here by as much as 20%. „Energy costs are a significant item in many key sectors of the Slovak economy,“ emphasized Lasz.
According to Slovak Sustainable Energy Association (SAPI) director Jan Karaba, the problem is also the lack of transparency of the decisions of the Regulatory Office for Network Industries (URSO) in the case of sudden increases in network fees or various tariffs that make them up.
„For customers in western Slovakia, the access fee will increase by only 3%, while in eastern Slovakia, where consumers already pay the highest fee this year, it will be by up to 20 percent,“ added Karaba.
Lasz also says that such not very transparent changes raise questions, especially when the state wants to attract investors and create jobs, even in regions with high unemployment. „An investor in eastern Slovakia will pay 65 percent more for the network access fee alone than if he opened his operation in western Slovakia.
The problem is, of course, that it is difficult to predict the growth of energy costs not in some five to six years, but even in the next one,“ Lasz stated.
