Who says that electricity costs a lot? If anything, it is the bill that bleeds us, not the electricity itself, and it is also true now that - for the next quarter - the Minister of Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani has announced increases of up to 40% due to the increase in raw material costs, that is, energy. However, it must be said that, in the invoice that the electricity service operators send us home, for each euro we pay a maximum of 37 cents (but depending on the contracts it could be only 28) they are used to pay for energy. Everything else goes into the thousand streams of management costs and taxes that we have to pay for our consumption.
Of course, it is important to try to save on the energy we use, also for ecological reasons, as long as we resign ourselves to not seeing truly appreciable differences when, in the letter box or on the e-mail, we find the invoice. On the other hand, if most of the money goes away for other reasons, using fewer kilowatts can nibble a few euros out of the account, in the case of higher consumption very few tens of euros. And the desire passes. And those management costs that devour our money are those of energy transport, meter management and system charges, which are added to VAT and other taxes.
This is what emerges from a study by the Sostariffe.it website: its Observatory examined the cases of three types of electricity service customers, namely singles, couples and families of parents and two children. And yes, thanks to the free market, by signing the contract of the right type and with the right manager, it turned out that in the last year the bill has "lost weight" up to 27.7%. In the free market, it is worth repeating, because without competition it would not have happened.
The parameter, for all three types of customers, is that of the most "spartan" user: a meter with a power of 3 kilowatts, and Sostariffe.it considered a user in Milan. The single consumes on average 1,400 kWh per year, the childless couple 2,400, and if you add two more people to the family unit, it rises to 3,400. This is how it was established - excluding the Rai fee included in the bill, not counted for this survey - that the cost of electricity only affects between 28% and 37% of what we pay.
The single living in Milan spends an average of 210 euros a year: not bad, compared to the 290 he paid in the previous summer (27% less). Of those 210 euros, only 60 are for energy itself, so just over a quarter (28.66%). The rest goes into miscellaneous expenses and taxes: those for the transport of energy and for the management of the meter take away 96 euros, that is almost half (46%). System charges weigh 34 euros for the individual (16.25%), VAT and taxes account for another 19 euros (just over 9%).
For the couple living in Milan, the annual cost for the electricity bill (again with a three Kwh meter) is on average 324 euros: compared to the August 2020 survey, they spend 23.89% less (before they spent 407 ). Now, of those 324 euros that he spends, only 117 pay for actual energy consumption, therefore 36.09% of the total. The rest of the invoice charges 105.58 euros for transport and management of the meter (32.56%) and 58.54 euros for system charges (18.06%). That couple then spends € 43.09 in VAT and various taxes, equal to 13.29%.
And then there is the family of four, which is the case where the disproportion between consumption and expenditure is most evident. Well, if a father, mother and two children (or a son and a grandfather, to say) spends an average of 467 euros every year, always with the three Kwh - which in four begin to be not many, especially if the water heater is electric - is certainly saving compared to August 2020, when he spent 553, with a decrease of 15.66%. However, if we consider the “energy” item in the bill, the cost would be 173.78 euros. For the management of the meter, that family pays 114.47 euros (24.5% of the total) and the system charges reach 92.94 euros (17.75%). VAT and other taxes weigh for 96.04 euros, therefore for 20.56%.
This is why the competition between electricity suppliers in Italy is quite fierce: profit margins are high and companies can “play” with their premium to be competitive. The problem is not to keep up with the rates, but the offers, especially those that are valid only for the first period but then become comparable or even higher than the average, and this is more like a job than being the owner of a user.
