Millions of electricity customers received mail from their electricity provider in November. The content of the letter: a hefty price increase at the turn of the year. In the basic service alone, around 600 providers are increasing their prices, according to the comparison portal Check24. Almost seven and a half million households are affected. In addition, there are the electricity customers who have a contract outside of the basic supply and who have also received a price increase.

Some providers just double the price for the kilowatt hour. On average, according to Verivox and Check24, the price increases are 50 to 60 percent. For family households with annual consumption of 4,000 to 5,000 kilowatt hours, this means additional costs of 700 to 900 euros or more. What can you do now? The most important questions and answers.

First of all, you should check whether the price increase is legal at all, recommends the NRW consumer advice center. In order to be effective, a price increase must be announced by the electricity provider in writing and in good time – six weeks before the price adjustment.

Anyone who has a contract with a price guarantee may not receive a price increase during this period due to increased energy procurement costs. In the case of limited price guarantees, only higher taxes, duties and surcharges may be used as justification. If you want to object to the price increase, you can use a sample letter from the consumer advice centers. There are no price guarantees in the basic service, but the increase must be announced here as well.

Whoever is in the basic service - that is automatically everyone who has never changed since moving in - can switch to another provider at any time. Anyone who is not in the basic service always has a special right of termination in the event of price increases. This is limited in time: if the price increases on January 1st, the provider must be notified by December 31st.

The question is whether you can currently find another provider that is cheaper. A look at the comparison portals can quickly bring disillusionment. "Unfortunately, the new customer tariffs via the brokerage portals are even higher, so that changing providers in most tariff areas does not bring any savings," says Udo Sieverding from the NRW consumer advice center to DPA.

The market is so upside down that the basic service - previously notorious for being particularly expensive - can currently even be the cheapest option. Customers outside of the basic service should therefore consider making use of the special right of termination and simply fleeing to the basic service, says consumer advocate Sieverding. You should therefore compare your new price with the price of the local basic service that will apply from January.

Each region has exactly one basic supplier who supplies all customers who have not actively concluded a special contract. These are usually the local municipal utilities or large companies such as Vattenfall, Eon and EnBW. The good thing is that anyone who cancels their electricity provider without looking for a new one does not risk sitting in the dark, but automatically ends up with the default supplier.

With this fallback solution, there is only one pitfall for consumers: basic suppliers can initially park customers who automatically fall to them due to termination with another provider in the so-called replacement supply. In this they can temporarily demand higher prices from the stranded electricity customers than in the actual basic supply. A normal basic supply contract only comes about after three months of replacement supply.

The consumer portal Finanztip therefore recommends that all electricity customers who want to use the basic supply (and not the more expensive alternative supply) actively register with the basic supplier. This is not possible via comparison portals, but directly from the supplier himself - in writing. Some suppliers still put such new customers in the replacement supply first, but from the point of view of consumer advocates this is illegal and should not be put up with. Finanztip offers a sample letter with which you can claim back costs from the replacement supply.

The electricity price brake is to cap the electricity price to 40 cents from March – retrospectively also for January and February. Since most tariffs are higher from January, that actually helps. Nevertheless, it is not irrelevant how high your own electricity price actually is. Because the cap only applies to 80 percent of the previous year's consumption. Anything beyond that you pay full price.

Incidentally, even with a 40-cent cap, electricity is historically expensive: in 2021, according to Verivox, the average electricity price for households was still 34 cents. With a view to the future, the comparison portal writes: "The electricity prices for households will not fall significantly in the short and medium term. Due to the energy crisis, electricity will remain permanently expensive throughout Europe in the coming years."

Sources: DPA / Check24 / Verivox / Verbraucherzentrale NRW / Finanztip