Power, Power prices | Postponing controversial change in online rent

In 2022, a new online rental model was introduced, which should make the fixed part of the bill significantly larger.

The idea behind the change was that the most important thing for the electricity grid was not how much electricity you used in total, but how much electricity you used when consumption was at its highest.

The more electricity you used at once, the higher the “power level” you have to pay.

The whole point was that you should have financial incentives to move the electricity consumption that was possible to move. Then the need to upgrade the power grid could be reduced.

Read also: New online rental was incredibly unpopular: Has not had an effect

But the full change did not come in 2022: In the rule change, there was a deadline for the network companies to adapt their prices by July 2024 so that this fixed term had to be at least half of the network companies’ income.

Or put another way: The fixed term customers paid had to increase in price.

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Great resistance

It is a change that many of the online companies have not implemented. Among other things, the electricity price crisis has made it almost impossible to see whether the change actually has an effect.

The grid companies have therefore asked for a two-year postponement. Last month, Europower reported a letter to the ministry in which strong pressure was put on the ministry of the rather special kind:

“The message to the ministry is therefore that if the parties do not get the postponement they are asking for, then there will not be much will to agree on what effects the new online rental model has had,” wrote the industry website.

Gets a two-year reprieve

Now energy minister Terje Aasland (Ap) confirms that the industry gets what it wants.

– We need a better knowledge base to know how and whether the changes in online rent affect people’s electricity consumption. By notifying the extension now, the online companies also have good opportunities to provide good information to their customers going forward, says Aasland in a message.

At the same time, NVE at the Energy Regulatory Authority (RME) has its deadline for delivering an evaluation postponed until November 2025.