Changes in the regulation of invoices and how the lack of transparency affects electricity users, and the market was discussed when participants from the Nordic Energy Regulators (NRAs) met in Helsinki to exchange experiences.
The Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish NRAs all recognise that the high energy prices of the last two years have affected the retail electricity market in many ways, which for example, manifests itself in a greater variety of contract types and separate national electricity compensation schemes. According to the participants in the workshop, clearer invoices in combination with more transparent price information are of great importance to the customers. How information is communicated to customers was also recognised as a key factor.
The participants from the Nordic NRAs in the 6th Annual Monitoring Workshop arranged by NordREG, also shared their experience from national monitoring cases, compared possible remedial actions and learned from each other´s experiences. Among other things the participants discussed the challenges involved in monitoring suppliers who are reluctant or unwilling to co-operate with the regulators as well as market players who are either not covered by current legislation or new to the market. Companies that go bankrupt after only a short time on the market and then re-emerge in a different form were also discussed.
Furthermore, the price comparison tools and the possibility of automatic checks with the help of robots, were also an interesting and topic of the lively discussion.