Who won and who didn’t at the auctions for the free electricity market
The auctions for the transfer of electricity users from the protected market to the free one ended with a victory for Enel. Here are the results of the group led by Cattaneo and the other operators
The auctions held on January 10th for the transfer of electricity users from the protected regime to the free market ended – provisionally, because the final award will take place on February 6th – with a great victory for Enel and Hera. The two companies together were awarded 4.5 million customers, as communicated yesterday by the Single Buyer (the company of the Ministry of Economy which guarantees electricity supplies to consumers in the protected market).
Enel obtained seven of the twenty-six user lots put up for auction, for a total of 1.4 million customers (230,000 per lot). Hera, a multi-service company focused on Emilia-Romagna, did the same: around 1.4 million more customers, despite some losses in Bologna.
ENEL'S VICTORY
But the biggest victory of all was probably that of Enel. The group (led by Flavio Cattaneo, in the photo) obtained the most from the auctions, i.e. retaining 30 percent of customers who left the protected market. The rules for the transition to the free market in fact provide, as a guarantee of true competition, that Enel – given its position as incumbent , i.e. as a former monopoly company that continues to have a dominant position in a liberalized market, with a 60% share percent – renounce part of his contracts. In summary: the auction established that Enel could reacquire no more than 30 percent of the total users put up for auction, and so it was.
In addition to this, the company has also managed to penetrate geographical areas where it was not present, as underlined by Il Sole 24 Ore : that is, in Milan and Brescia, locations generally dominated by local companies and inhabited by a high-income clientele to which Enel could also propose offers for the supply of natural gas (the end of the protected model is also expected in this latter market).
HOW PLENITUDE, ACEA, EDISON, A2A AND MORE DID
Enel also managed to win the Roman customers of Acea, which was unable to win any lots. No lot even for Plenitude , a company controlled by Eni, which is also well positioned in Rome.
Edison obtained four batches of users; Iren and A2A two each; Illumia three; Eon one.
A2A lost share in Milan but gained some between Naples, Palermo and Cagliari: 460,000 more customers, but less than set. Iren, similarly, settled in Emilia-Romagna but grew up in the South, in Puglia and Salerno.
Illumia, a small operator (200,000 customers), obtained 600,000 more.
WHAT THE BENEFITS FOR USERS
Il Sole 24 Ore reports that some operators participating in the auctions “made discounts of between 40-50 euros […]. For all customers of the gradual protections, this will translate into a discount of around 2 euros per month on the bill. The discount will be the same for everyone because a weighted average price will be determined based on the number of individual lots".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/enel-hera-aste-mercato-libero-energia-elettrica/ on Fri, 12 Jan 2024 09:20:41 +0000.