Czechs made 784.040 energy supplier switches last year, up a fifth year on year

Czechs made 784.040 changes of electricity and gas supplier last year. That is around a fifth more than in 2023. Customers switched electricity suppliers more often. This is according to data from the Electricity Market Operator (OTE). Consumers were therefore likely responding to suppliers changing their prices more frequently.

Last year, consumers switched their electricity supplier 579.344 times, around 22 percent more than a year earlier. Consumers also switched gas suppliers more often last year, doing so 204.696 times, an increase of almost 17 percent compared with the year before. The total number of switches was at the 2022 level, when the market was affected by the energy crisis.

According to the statistics, consumers traditionally made the most switches at the very start of the year, when traders often introduce new tariffs. The operator recorded more than a quarter of all last year's switches in January. In the spring, by contrast, the number of electricity and gas supplier switches fell to a minimum. From autumn, switches gradually began to rise again as traders expanded their range of offers.

However, according to Radim Dohnal, an analyst at Capitalinked.com, the number of switches is still pitifully low. He pointed out that there are 6.3 million connection points in Czechia, so last year's switches amounted to around 12,4 percent. „This shows that Czechs are not economically literate, do not want to take advantage of the benefits of the free market and capitalism, and stay with their original monopolies. It is similar in mobile phone services, insurance and banking. As a result, suppliers in these sectors have above-average margins and profits by European standards,“ Dohnal noted.

According to Jiří Tyleček, an analyst at XTB, the increase in switches last year was the result of large price differences between suppliers and attractive offers on the market. „As market prices fell, suppliers benefited from a strategy of not buying energy in advance, but instead responding flexibly to conditions by making smaller, gradual purchases for their customers,“ he said.

Last year, Czechs responded to new, mostly cheaper offers from electricity and gas suppliers, most of which adjusted their price lists several times during the year. The gradual decline in energy prices on the wholesale market was reflected in suppliers' offers. Some suppliers cut prices by hundreds or even thousands of crowns per megawatt-hour consumed over the course of the year. Unlike in 2023, government price caps were no longer in effect last year; the government had set them for the whole of the previous year in response to the sharp rise in energy prices during the energy crisis. This year, too, a number of major suppliers cut their energy prices by a further few hundred crowns per megawatt-hour at the start of the year.

Despite the price cuts, however, energy prices remain high, according to Tyleček. „Compared with the pre-COVID year of 2019, total costs per kilowatt-hour are currently more than twice as high,“ he said.

The electricity market in Czechia has been fully liberalized since 2006, and the gas market since 2007. Since then, customers have been able to choose their energy supplier.