Electricity: with the Integrated Information System to change supplier will be faster and easier

Milan, October 19, 2015

Italian version

Faster and easier handling the change of the electricity supplier. From 1 June 2016, all procedures to pass to a new supplier will be made centrally through the Integrated Information System (SII), a national database managed by a third-party market operator, launched by the Authority, to make the exchange of information between operators of the electricity and gas sectors more transparent and efficient. With the new approved rules, when the customer decides to change supplier (i.e. switching), he will continue to deal with the supplier only. The supplier will no longer use one single distributor but will turn to the SII, where transactions can be carried out within certain and set deadlines. With  resolution 487/2015/R/eel, the Authority adds, therefore, a further element towards the full implementation of the Information System (after having, for example, already envisaged the possibility of transfers from 1 November), for a better management of contractual relations, based on non-discrimination among operators, releasing  the retail markets from information barriers or incumbent advantages.

In particular, among the more relevant aspects of the new electricity market regulations - a process that will be developed with successive test stages until their definitive implementation on 1 June - there is a  radical change in market structure with responsibility for switching transactions assigned to the SII (and no longer to the distributing company), both for changes of supplier and in the case of activation of last resort services[1]. The switching timelines are reduced to three weeks; they used to be around one month long (a switching application effective from the first day of the month can be made up to 10 days  of the previous  month). It is also defined as a single process, undifferentiated by execution time, even when the operator that acquires the new customer decides to  use  the so-called "conditional switching"[2].  The innovations  are also about the method by which the SII makes effective the termination of a supply contract and the activation, if there are  the necessary requirements, of the last resort service.
Resolution 487/2015/R/eel is available on the website www.autorita.energia.it


[1]This service guarantees the continuity of supply of energy for some types of free customers that, even temporarily, do not have a supplier for reasons beyond their own will.
[2] For "conditional switching we shall mean the right to withdraw, within the prescribed time, the switching request once known some information related to the end customer.