6.8% electricity price rise approved

Tuesday 30 April 2019

The competition regulator has agreed Guernsey Electricity can put its prices up, as the utility firm faces ever increasing running costs.

The Guernsey Competition and Regulatory Authority has published a Statutory Notice outlining its decision, which will allow GEL to put its unit prices up by 6.8% for three years.

It is the first of two statutory stages and can be read here. 

GEL had asked the Competition Authority "to recover uncontrollable costs related to importation and generation of electricity, which are primarily related to the price of oil and exchange rate movements over the period April 2017 to March 2019."

The Competition Authority said it has looked at the evidence and decided to agree that GEL can recover £9.8m from customers, which equates to an increase of 6.8% in unit charges over the next three years. 

The Competition Authority has said a "more in-depth review of energy prices" will be helped by political decisions and it is working with the States to bring that about.