Casa Santo Estevo

The government is thinking about freeing up the market to make it a truly free market.
But those of you who have a potencia of less then 3kW will still not be able to change suppliers.

Article

Fred James

So that means a 20% -30% increase for all those currently on the TUR tariff!

In this context a "free" market means the suppliers are free to charge what they like and it certainly won't be less than at present!

Casa Santo Estevo

Yep free market means rises, well here in Spain at least.
There are immediate price rises at the quoted percentages I think that this would prove to be another blow to Zap’s credibility to run the country. But can he get any lower?
Another thought is that maybe it is just newspaper talk.

cricketman

Well actually, you privatise water and electricity and prices usually increase. Have a look at what happened in Bolivia, people ended up paying half their salary to drink water that they used to get for free from the mountain streams. This is what drove the socialist revolution.

BTW, Zapatero's ratings arent that bad considering the crisis the whole Western world is in. He has a higher rating than Obama does in the US and higher than Brown had in the UK.

He has been given a boost in the past few days because wikileaks showed how Zapatero resisted brownnoising the US and stuck up for the interests of Spaniards (i.e. the exact opposite of what Aznar did). The US respected him for this, calling him a "jungle cat" of the political world

bil

Yeah, everyone slags Zappy off simply because he is the one holding the reins. I just ask a simple question. Would it have been so much better had Aznar stayed in power?

Personally I think not. He would almost certainly have been brown nosing the Yanks like a man possessed, and I don't see the right as having been stricter with the banks in the lead up to the crisis, in fact just the opposite.

Plus, the Spanish soldiers would still be stuck in Afghanistan.

Casa Santo Estevo

Sorry I don't comprehend your line of reasoning. The electricity industry here in Spain is already in private hands. It is the regulation which is controlled by the government, and that is what is going to be removed.
Prices always increase no matter who owns them.

Political arguments will take this subject off thread.

bil

I'm assuming that the vast majority of people are on the low potencia?

If that's the case, how will it be a truly free market?

Fred James

No, the vast majority (27m households) are on the TUR tariff. Almost all of them will be on a potencia greater than 3kw so the changes will affect them.

Electricity prices in Spain have been kept artificially low by the government for some time and it looks like that is now coming to and end.

snikpoh

Forgive my ignorance but are they really 'artificially low' when they are so much more than the UK or most other EU states (I suspect)?

Fred James

They are lower than the price asked for by the suppliers and have been for some time. The government has consistently reduced the price rises asked for by the suppliers. It seems that will now end.

It is a case of supply and demand - the price in other countries is irrelevant.

cricketman

Spain as a country owns very little energy reserves, except for renewable energy, but that is very expensive to produce electricity from. Hence the high prices.

I am actually for relatively high energy prices. What happens when energy prices are low? Well look at the US. The average American emits 2.5 times more CO2 than the average European.

Fred James

That's because most of them are 2.5 times the size.

jdr