Electricity Tariffs to Increase 6.4% from July But People Who Have ‘Switched’ Won’t be Affected

Every three months, you’ll see this news:

Electricity Tariffs Increase 6% from <Date>

Electricity Tariffs Decrease 621% from <Date>

And there’s a reason for this: every three months, SP Group will review the electricity tariffs based on the guidelines set by the Energy Market Authority (EMA), the electricity industry regulator.

The quarterly changes are due to many external factors, which SP Group would disclose during the changes.

Since October 2018, every review leads to a drop in electricity tariffs, and if you’re buying electricity from SP Group, that would be a drop in electricity bill, too.

But the tariffs are rising for the first time this year, and it’s a rather big increase, at a whopping 6.4%.

Here’s a graph showing the rise and drop of the tariffs in the last two years:

So now, if you’re still using SP Group, it’ll cost 24.22 cents (before GST) per kwh from 1 July 2019, compared to the current 22.79 cents. With GST, the new amount will be 25.92 cents per kwh.

According to SP Group, that’ll be an increase of about $5.20 per month for a 4-room HDB flat.

The reason for the rise?

There’s a “higher cost of natural gas for electricity generation compared with the previous quarter.”

But unlike last year when a rise would lead to some people selling their organs or their sole kid to pay the higher bills, this year’s a tad different.

A group of them would be laughing at people like my boss who’s still using SP Group as our electricity retailer for our office despite countless salespeople from other retailers knocking on our door.

People Who’ve Switched Won’t Be Affected

Lest you’re not aware, you can now buy electricity from other retailers.

Usually, these retailers offer a fixed amount if you sign a contract. For example, I’m now looking at the website of one retailer that offers a fixed rate of 18.90 cents per kwh if you sign either a 6, 12 or 24 months contract.

So, when the electricity tariffs change, they’ll still pay that fixed amount.

The retailers would of course earn less…but who cares, right?

After all, when one retailer suddenly bailed out recently due to the strong competition, customers’ bills were automatically transferred back to SP Group without any disruption.

If you want to know more, you can check out this branded video we did for the Energy Market Authority here:

So, have you switched?

Boss, are you reading this? Can we finally allow those salespeople to come in to talk to you?