Lisbon, April 16, 2025 (Lusa) - The Energy Services Regulatory Authority (erse) said on Wednesday that the estimated impact of investment in the National Distribution Network on household electricity bills between 2025 and 2030 will be 0.1% (annualised). ‘ERSE clarifies that the tariff impact on final sales prices to domestic consumers, resulting from the proposed Development and Investment Plan for the National Distribution Network (RND) in the electricity sector for the period 2026-2030 (PDIRD-E 2024), will be, on average, 0.1% (annualised value) between 2025 and 2030,’ the regulator said in a statement. This clarification follows a report in Negócios on Tuesday stating that E-Redes' investments will increase the price of electricity. The PDIRD-E 2024 proposal, on which ERSE issued its opinion on April 10, presents an investment scenario for the period 2026 to 2030 totalling €1.6 billion in costs. This is in view of the need to respond to the challenges posed to distribution networks by decarbonisation and electrification. In ERSE's opinion, the impact on final sales prices to end customers, forecast for 2030 compared to 2025, represents an average annual variation of between 0.0% and 0.2% for the various customer segments. ERSE also estimated that, over the five years, the proposal represents an increase of 0.7% in the bill, but emphasised that this variation ‘could still be mitigated if demand proves to be higher than the scenarios adopted until 2030, such as a faster pace, in the medium term, of the electrification of society’. The energy regulator pointed out that a new regulatory period begins in 2026, which ‘will represent an opportunity for its improvement to smooth out the tariff impacts of this investment plan over the regulatory period’. In addition, he added, this increase does not take into account changes in the prices of the other components that make up the final price for customers, and it is expected that there will be decreases in the extra costs of production with guaranteed remuneration and in the price of energy on the wholesale markets, ‘if there are no extraordinary emerging situations deriving from the international geopolitical context, which could contribute to mitigating the increases estimated by ERSE’. In its opinion released on 10 April, ERSE considered the PDIRD-E proposal adequate overall but pointed out improvements. The regulator recommended, therefore, that the RND operator emphasise the level at which it plans to use dynamic models for intelligent network management and present an annual estimate of the length of the network it plans to operate. On the other hand, it suggests that the operator identify new cases of ‘potential recourse’ to flexibility solutions and deepen its knowledge of planning methodologies based on probabilistic criteria. With regard to investment in asset renewal, ERSE considered the option to adopt a methodology based on the physical condition of assets rather than their age appropriateness, but it argued that the response to investment needs should be time-lagged, making it possible to ‘smooth out the impact of this investment on tariffs’. ‘Concerning investment needs focused on the quality of technical service, despite the path already travelled in this area, ERSE recommends that, in the final version of the PDIRD-E 2024 proposal, situations of supply to LV [low voltage] networks should be identified in which it may be necessary to reinforce the supply from the MV [medium voltage] network,’ he added. MPE/ADB // ADB. Lusa