The Council of Ministers has approved this Tuesday a new calculation methodology for the regulated price of light (PVPC) that currently have contracted around nine million consumers, 34% of domestic consumers.
The main objective of this reform is to decouple the price of consumer bills from the fluctuations of market volatility and avoid the contagion that has occurred during the last energy crisis, as explained on Tuesday by the Government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez , during the press conference after the Council of Ministers.
The reform responds to the commitment that Spain acquired when the European Union allowed it to approve the Iberian exception to cap the price of consumer bills a year ago now.
This does not mean that this new calculation implies a direct drop in the price of the final bills. What it seeks is to separate these invoices from the direct impact of the daily market, since Spain was the only European country that had this method of calculating prices, which is why it was the first to be affected by the energy crisis that broke out two years ago. .
With this new methodology, the reference marketers, which are the ones that will be able to offer this rate, will have to start energy in the market tomorrow in installments to cover the demands of the clients as of January, which implies contracting coverage and therefore the payment of some premiums that will be transferred to the prices.
To do this, the new price calculation structure reduces the current 100% indexation to the daily light market (spot market) to 45% when its full application is deployed, which will not happen until 2026.
The remaining 55% percentage will be calculated based on a basket of futures prices that will include prices that reflect the cost of the MWh, which will be made up of 10% of products that reflect the one-month price quote, 36% that reflect the quarterly price and 54% of products that mark a price for one year.
The implementation of this new calculation will be progressive. It will start in 2024 with an indexation of only 25% to the long-term markets and 75%, as up to now, will depend on the result of the daily auction in the wholesale market. One year later, on January 1, 2025, it will go to 40% of the price linked to the forward market and 60% to the daily. Finally, on January 1, 2026, the final percentage of 55% linked to the term market and 45% to the indexed one will be applied.
As up to now, the new PVPC will be offered to last-resort marketers, and it will be the mandatory contracting rate for those who want to opt for the social bonus and 40% price reductions if they are vulnerable consumers and 80% in the case to be severely vulnerable (a total of 1.5 million households).
It may be contracted by domestic consumers and micro-SMEs whose annual expenditure is less than 10 kilowatts. But big companies are left out of it. For this, the Government will require a responsible voluntary declaration in which it is demonstrated that the company that hires this rate is a micro-SME and the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) will be the body that will supervise the veracity of this declaration.
In any case, a transitional regime is established by which this pricing modality will not affect the contracts that these companies have signed before January 2024.
The new methodology maintains the reference to daily prices so as not to lose the hourly price signal, since the Government considers that this helps to promote efficient consumption patterns and that customers adapt their spending to take advantage of the cheapest hours.
