The electricity price for household customers is made up of surcharges, taxes, network tariffs and fees, distribution costs and margin, and procurement costs. The individual price components are calculated as follows to model the electricity price for new household customers:

• Information on surcharges, taxes, network tariffs and fees is gathered as part of annual monitoring and assumed to be constant. Changes within the course of the year are reflected immediately. Turnover tax is calculated separately on a monthly basis and added to this price component.
• Distribution costs and margin are gathered as part of annual monitoring and assumed to be constant for the year.
• Procurement costs for new customers are calculated on a monthly basis using the procurement strategy reported by electricity suppliers for annual monitoring. To do this, the respective average prices of the electricity products (day-ahead, monthly products, quarterly products, 1-year futures, 2-year futures and 3-year futures) are weighted with these products’ average shares of total procurement.
   

To determine the prices for existing customers, a rolling average of the modelled new customer prices from the previous months is used. The number of previous months used is based on responses in the annual monitoring survey on household customers about how long household customers remain in their energy supplier’s contract.

An index is also used to show trends in the retail prices for electricity and gas. January 2021 is used as the base month. The index values are calculated by dividing the price modelled by the Bundesnetzagentur for each month by the price of the base month and multiplying by 100.

The charts also include inflation-adjusted index values to accurately show the actual changes in electricity and gas retail prices for consumers. The adjustment for inflation is based on the consumer price index for Germany, which is published monthly by the Federal Statistical Office.