– One can safely say that we are talking about several million, says Svein Ove Søreide, communications manager at BKK Nett. They supply power grids to around 190,000 private customers in Vestland. The way the electricity subsidy from the state is organised, it is the grid company that is responsible for paying out the subsidy. But BKK has NOK 5.8 million on hold. The reason is that they simply do not have the account numbers for everyone who is to receive support. – There are actually 18,000 transactions on hold with us, says Søreide. – BKK Nett has paid out over NOK 1.5 billion since the support scheme started, says Svein Ove Søreide. Debt from thousands of customers Even though several of the transactions are to the same customers, there are still several thousand customers who have not received support. – Some may have thousands of kroner to their credit. It may well happen that some people have missed several months of electricity support. This is how the electricity subsidy works The government has introduced an electricity subsidy scheme to help households deal with extraordinary electricity prices. The scheme applies to electricity consumption from and including December 2021 and up to and including March 2023. The scheme works so that when the average market price exceeds 70 øre per kilowatt hour, the state will pay 80 per cent of the price above 70 øre. For consumption from October to December 2022, 90 per cent is covered. The government has announced that they will propose to the Storting that this should also apply in September. Through the scheme, a household will receive support for electricity consumption of up to five thousand kilowatt hours per month. It has been decided that this shall also apply to households that are jointly measured, i.e. housing associations, co-owners, joint-stock companies and non-sectioned co-owners. The scheme covers household consumption. The scheme is administered through the network company. You can read more here. Source: The government Both Lnett in Rogaland, Agder Energi, Lede AS in Telemark and parts of Viken describe a similar situation. – There are 9,526 customers for whom I do not have the account number. This amounts to approximately 17,500 transactions, says Ingvild Ween in Lnett. The amount they owe is just over NOK 7.3 million. Lede has an outstanding sum of 1.2 million which is due for just under 3,000 customers, while Agder Energi has 4 million for well over 3,500 customers. And the reason is the same for all of them: They lack the account number for the customers. Screenshot from the website of Lede. Photo: Skjermdump Do people think they are being scammed? BKK has tried to get hold of account numbers by sending SMS and e-mails to customers. Nevertheless, they have not succeeded in obtaining all the account numbers. – Some may think that it is an attempt at fraud when I send out SMS, but it is completely safe. You log in with BankID on BKK’s website and enter the account number there, says Søreide. – But people usually pay online rent to you, can’t they just pay out to the account number that was used to pay with? – We need to know which account people want the payment to. In many of these cases, we have not previously had payments from the customer either, says Søreide. He explains that many of the cases concern customers who have not received invoices from BKK before, but to whom they have now started sending invoices. Many have experienced receiving invoices for NOK 0. BKK encourages you to open them. Then you can see how much power support you get. Photo: Skjermdump More and more people receive two invoices Around 40 per cent of BKK’s private customers receive one invoice from the electricity company and one from the network company. In the past, so-called pass-through invoicing was more common. Then you get the network rent and the electricity on the same invoice. Several electricity companies have moved away from this arrangement, and therefore many now receive two invoices. – A few months ago, only 20 per cent received their own invoice from us, says Søreide. Many of the customers who are now being billed for the first time are missing their BKK account number. Older people hit harder This is also the situation with the other online companies. Lede AS knows that at the end of August they will “get” around 20,000 new customers for whom they lack the account number. They have contacted these. – There is a great response to this from customers these days. We expect that many of these will register their account numbers before the time of payment, says Thor Bjørn Omnes in Lede AS. Omnes says that it is mainly the older customer group that they lack the account number for.
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