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Grid costs for electricity and gas will rise from 1 January 2025. The regulatory authority E-Control announced the regulations on Monday. The grid fees for households will increase by an average of 23.1 percent for electricity and 16.6 percent for gas. There were minimal changes in the individual grid areas compared to the draft regulations. As levies will again be charged in full, energy bills will rise by several hundred euros in 2025.
The biggest changes to the draft regulation are in Tyrol, where electricity grid costs will now rise to 7.81 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) instead of 7.85 cents, and gas grid costs will only rise to 2.43 cents per kWh instead of 2.48 cents. In most federal states, grid costs per kWh will increase by 0.01 or 0.02 cents more than originally envisaged in the draft regulations. Over the year, the difference for average households is one to three euros.
Compared to 2024, however, the grid fees for electricity and gas will increase significantly. The reasons are similar for both energy sources: while the costs for the grid are rising, the amount of energy purchased from the grid is falling. This means that higher costs are spread over fewer energy units consumed. In the case of electricity, this is partly due to the photovoltaic boom; in the case of gas, it is partly due to the switch to other forms of heating and the fact that transmission fees have increased and gas-fired power plants have been used less frequently than in the past.
Energy bills for households are rising sharply
And because the levies, which were reduced to a minimum during the 2022 energy crisis, will once again apply in full at the turn of the year and the electricity price brake will expire, Austrian households’ energy bills will rise by several hundred euros a year, depending on the province and energy consumption.
The fact that the grid costs for electricity cannot be shared more fairly is also due to the failure of the new Electricity Industry Act (ElWG) planned by the ÖVP and the Greens. Household customers generally have no power metering; i.e., how much a customer uses the grid is undetermined. However, there is a big difference in the costs of the grid, whether the heat pump and electric car load the grid with 11 kilowatts (kW) or more or whether the stove and dishwasher only load it with two to four kilowatts. But, the more power is drawn simultaneously, the thicker the power cables need to be. E-Control board member Wolfgang Urbantschitsch is pushing for the law to be implemented in the next government. “The Electricity Act is urgently needed to structure the grid fees in a way that is more in line with the costs-by-cause principle,” he explained in the press release.
- source: APA/picture: pixabay.com
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