Help! My EDF rates appear to have risen 40%

I pay for my electricity with EDF on a monthly standing order basis, based on estimates, with readjustments applied later to account for real use and rises in rates. I receive an annual bill in July showing detailed working out. I have just seen in my online account that the current real rates, both for the abonnement (monthly standing charges) and for the price per unit (kWh) of electricity used increased dramatically since January 2018 compared to the rates I was paying in 2017 shown on my last bill – they are around 40% more! I am on the regulated tarif bleu and the 2018 rates are shown to be €9.65TTC (including all taxes) for the abonnement, €0.1252TTC per unit in off-peak times and €0.1593TTC at peak times (I am on the heures creuses/heures pleines offer). I have factored in the VAT, but the rate increase is enormous and I am worried about the readjustments and increased monthly standing order costs that I will face later on. How is this possible? T.B.

A spokesman for EDF said that it is not possible that you are facing an increase in your rates of around 40% - increases to the tarif bleu, a so-called ‘regulated’ rate with the historic supplier EDF, are fixed by the economy and energy ministers on advice from the Commission de Régulation de l’Energie. They are limited by formulas set out in law, linked to the costs to EDF of supplying the electricity.

The spokesman directed us to information from CRE showing that the average rise in January 2018 should have been no more than around 0.8% for individual (non-business) customers in Metropolitan France.

Going by the details you supplied to us of your last bill for comparison with the new TTC rates, it seems that the ‘dramatic’ difference you identified is due to you not having factored in some of the extra taxes that are levied on electricity – and on which VAT is also levied on top! In fact, when it comes to electricity bills, 'all taxes included' involves a lot more than just VAT.

These extra taxes can be found at the bottom of the bill and are:

• Taxe sur la Consommation Finale d’Electricité (TCFE), which was levied at €0.00957 / kWh on the electricity you used and then had 20% VAT applied on top
• Contribution au Service Public d’Electricité (CSPE), at €0.02250 / kWh plus 20% VAT
• Contribution Tarifaire d’Acheminement Electricté (CTA) – a set fee which is added to the cost of the standing charge and which has VAT added at a reduced rate of 5.5%

When these are added to the basic abonnement and price-per-unit rates shown on your bill you can see that in fact your off-peak rate actually dropped by 1.45%, while the peak one rose by 2.14%. The increase in the abonnement was also less than it initially appeared.

The TCFE goes to municipal and departmental councils, the CSPE goes to the state and goes into a pot to help develop renewable energies, and CTA goes towards energy workers’ pensions.