NMa Remains Alert to Performance of Energy Companies

The Office of Energy Regulation (DTe) of the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) has published the scorecard for the last quarter of 2005 on its website. This scorecard gives consumers insight into the administrative performance of individual energy companies.

The Office of Energy Regulation (DTe) of the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) has published the scorecard for the last quarter of 2005 on its website. This scorecard gives consumers insight into the administrative performance of individual energy companies. Consumers can see from the percentages on the scorecard whether energy companies, for instance, send invoices on time (within two months) following a change of address or a switch. DTe took the changes of address or switches in the month of September 2005 as the basis for this. The timeliness with which annual settlements are dispatched is also stated. With regard to the third quarter, DTe concludes that the performance in relation to electricity has improved across the board, but performance has deteriorated slightly in relation to gas.

'Nevertheless we conclude that continuous monitoring of the quality of energy suppliers bears fruit," according to Peter Plug, Director of DTe. 'Some energy companies have clearly made progress with their administrative processes. However, we will remain on the alert. It still happens that energy companies send their bills much too late. This may be a reason for us to conduct an investigation. In any event, we ask companies to explain what the causes are of the poor performance and we wish to see a plan of action. After all, consumers in a liberalised energy market must have good insight into the performance of energy suppliers. If the market does not operate transparently, this harms consumer confidence," according to Plug.

NMa started publishing the quarterly scorecard following major administrative backlogs observed at the beginning of 2005 at a number of energy companies. The scorecard was developed in cooperation with EnergieNed and includes all the electricity and gas suppliers with more than 10,000 customers.

The regulators will soon also start publishing data on the performance of network managers. This overview of performance will give insight into the timeliness with which network managers send invoices. Some consumers receive two invoices, one from their energy company for the supply of energy and one from their network manager for the transmission of energy. Consumers are not able to choose their own network manager.

The scorecard of the energy companies is available as of today from the websites of NMa and DTe.