The average price of electricity in the wholesale market for tomorrow Wednesday will be €165.59/MWh, 22.6% lower than this Tuesday, according to data published by the Iberian market operator (OMIE). This price is the first to be set under the Iberian exception, i.e. with a cap on the price of gas used to generate electricity.

The reduction in the electricity bill will have to wait. The third vice-president and minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, admitted this Monday that the government still cannot approve the regulation that should allow a limit on the price of gas because it has not yet obtained the definitive green light from Brussels. Last Tuesday Ribera and her Portuguese counterpart, José Duarte Cordeiro, met the Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, and announced they had been given the green light by the Commission to set a limit on gas prices of around €50/MWh, pending only a few technical details. But the final agreement has not yet been reached and, therefore, Pedro Sánchez's government will not be able to approve the measure at this Tuesday's cabinet meeting as Ribera had announced.

Spain and Portugal have reached an agreement with Brussels which will allow them to limit the price of gas to around €50/MWh, a measure that will last twelve months in order to lower the price of electricity. Just a month ago the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, returned from a tough leaders' summit in Brussels with a promise to push forward the measure, but it has taken intense negotiations between the European Commission and Madrid and Lisbon, who had made more ambitious proposal to limit gas to €30. But Brussels viewed it with concern because it feared it would damage the European single market for energy.

Financial analysts are not entirely sure about Spain and Portugal's proposal to cap gas used to generate electricity at €30/MWh on gas used to generate electricity in order to lower the price of electricity. "It is not 100% certain for us that the EU would approve such a low limit," says Banco Santander. As for JP Morgan, its analysts explain that "it is unlikely that the proposal will be accepted by the EC". For its part, JB Capital Markets says that it would not be surprising "to finally see a higher limit with a shorter duration".

Electricity prices skyrocketed last year as anyone who pays their monthly electricity bill well knows. This resulted in a sharp increase in the profits of these companies, which tripled, as ARA explained this week. What is not so well known is that during that year six directors, the main executives of large Spanish energy companies, were paid over €27m. In other words, the leaders of these companies were paid 5.2% more while, on average, their workers' salaries increased less than a third of that percentage, 1.5%.

Energy transition has a cost and Spanish consumers are feeling it. Despite the increase in electricity generation from renewable sources – wind energy led electricity generation in Spain last year – in 2021 prices soared. According to Omie, the Iberian electricity market operator, the average for the year in the wholesale market stood at €111.93/MWh, with a strong peak in the last months of the year. This average price is an all-time record and 229.5% higher than the previous year's, which was marked by historically low prices due to the pandemic.

This October, families with regulated electricity tariffs have paid the most expensive price in history. According to the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU), the average wholesale price has been €204.09, and, therefore, an average family will have, for the first time, paid over €100 in its electricity bill. Although in recent days it seems that the price is going down – albeit staying well above previous years – the truth is that trying to save by looking at the price fluctuations according to the time of day is an almost impossible task for the average consumer. The famous off-peak hours, when electricity is cheaper, oscillate, and, for example, in these last few days have been more in the afternoon rather than at night. But this does not mean that this will always be the case.