While the network charge, a kind of tax on the maintenance of electricity infrastructure, is skyrocketing, a reader told us that the infrastructure is actually at a third-world level, and backed up his observation with a photo.
“Network charges have skyrocketed, and meanwhile, public cables are fixed to the trees… This is not the situation in Nepal, but it is the situation on the 10th of January 2025 in Slovenia! This cable feeds a large part of the village. What if this pear tree, for example, is knocked down by the wind?” wrote a reader who wished to remain anonymous.
“This situation has been reported to the electricity company Elektro Ljubljana at least 8 times since 2016 – meaning, in the last 8 years. There has been no answer. Why should we pay such high network charges? For whom? This is sad and unbelievable,” he added.
Higher network charges but poor service
There are many such cases in Slovenia. Sometimes, entire towns are left in a state of blackout because of ageing infrastructure and poorly implemented solutions. The fact that we are still installing power lines in the country’s capital in such a poor way is particularly relevant these days, when the network charges have changed, and the item on the bill has become drastically more expensive.
Why do we pay for network charges at all?
Network charges pay for the transmission and distribution of electricity through the electricity network to your point of consumption. They are used to run the distribution operator’s utility activities, cover the costs of system services, and the operation of the Energy Agency. They are set by the market regulator, the Energy Agency. Therefore, network charges are the cost of maintaining the electricity installation – it is like paying an extra tax at the petrol station to maintain the petrol station (where, of course, this cost is covered by the private owners of the said petrol stations).
The unpleasant surprises on the electricity bills that citizens received in December are a direct consequence of the fact that we are now paying drastically more specifically for the maintenance of the network, which is included in the bill under the heading of ‘network charges’.
A reader wonders why he bought a solar power plant in the first place
The reader is also wondering why he built a solar power plant in the first place if he now has to pay almost the same amount as everyone else.
He suggests to the company that installed the plant that, given the current situation, they should come and dismantle the plant, put the system back in its original state and refund the entire investment, because “he has never been screwed over like this by the state authorities, the Energy Agency and the entire electricity industry in his life.”
“The price of the network charge (even though we have a battery) has gone up from 9 euros to 43 euros!!! Unbelievable and utterly disgusting actions of the people who did this! First, they advise everyone to invest in solar power plants, and then they hit us the hardest with their charges!” he said.
But the new system of network charges was made precisely because of such excesses, because under the current system, the poor who cannot afford solar power, pay around 80 euros for electricity, so that those with money, who have it, pay 10 or 20 euros. Of course, the main player in this is the state, which has sold the investors the utopia of ‘self-sustainability’ – of course, no household with a solar power plant in a country where the sun does not shine that often is self-sustainable – if it were, it could easily disconnect from the electricity grid and not have to worry about network charges and other taxes at all.
In reality, the money is going to the green tranistion
The new system of network charges was therefore adopted as some kind of fire-fighting action, as the Energy Agency concluded that the current situation was unsustainable in the long term. It is clear that the higher network charge is really just an excuse for the Energy Agency to manage the drastic peaks and troughs caused by the political push for renewable energy sources. The money will therefore not go to renewing the dilapidated infrastructure, but for political purposes to pursue the green environmental agenda and also the purely private interests of the members of the government. It is worth noting that the Prime Minister, through his company Star Solar, is himself a reseller of renewable energy.
Both the media and government policy – perhaps deliberately – are overlooking what the original problem is. In a country where the sun does not shine, and the wind does not blow constantly, we have committed ourselves to an energy transition that, in the long term, is totally dependent on these two natural resources.
Unreliable renewable energy sources cause huge fluctuations in the voltage of the grid, which the new network charges seek to mitigate. In addition to normal network charges, we will now also have a whole bunch of ‘self-sustaining’ solar power plant owners living off overpaid electricity in winter from poorer consumers who cannot afford solar. But what will happen if one day, everyone has a solar power plant? Well, the system will collapse, of course, because then, under the old billing system, everyone would be paying around 10 to 20 euros in winter, even though they would be generating almost no electricity at all. In the long term, therefore, we will have only two options: to expand the energy portfolio to include a second nuclear power plant, new hydropower plants, and, at the same time, to extend the licence for the Šoštanj Thermal Power Plant – TEŠ 6. But that is clearly not going to happen. Therefore, the end goal for us and for a devastated Germany is the same: energy blackouts in the short term, energy poverty and de-industrialisation in the long term.
The renewal of ageing infrastructure is on the back burner, although it should be a primary concern for both the regulator and electricity providers. Now that they have just received exponentially higher funding for renewal, there is no longer any excuse for dangerous and poorly implemented wiring solutions such as the one sent to us by our reader. Apparently, even the operators do not dare to admit that the money earmarked for network maintenance will, in fact, go into the black hole of the green agenda.
I. K.
