Ordinary Ledger: 14 cents for a new gas contract, 20 cents between the pumps

On the first Sunday of November the ledger turns from the pump to the boiler. Both matter this week, and both have numbers you can check yourself.

The boiler. Verivox puts the average price of a new gas contract at about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour, for a household using 20,000 kWh a year, as of 30 October¹. Across all customers, old contracts and new, the average was about 12.7 cents on 1 October¹. In January, Verivox’s table showed a family in a 180 m² house paying 9.87 cents and €1,974 a year¹. Many suppliers are raising their prices, says its energy expert Thorsten Storck, and anyone who receives an increase should compare it with the offers available now¹.

Desk arithmetic: 20,000 kWh at 14 cents is €2,800 a year; at 12.7 cents it is €2,540. The €260 between the two is the price of signing a new contract this month rather than sitting on an older one, which is a reason to read your price guarantee’s end date before you switch, not after.

The pump. ADAC’s latest weekly reading found Super E10 at €2.084 a litre, down 2.6 cents, and diesel at €2.289, up 3.4 cents; diesel now costs over 20 cents more². The club blames dearer crude, a tight diesel market and rising heating-oil demand as the weather turns². The tank rebate, a cut of about 17 cents a litre including VAT, runs from the start of October to the end of December². The government wants a fuel-price cap by 1 January 2027 at the latest².

The kitchen, for balance. Food prices rose just 0.4% on the year in October, Destatis said on Friday; household energy rose 12.2%³. This winter’s squeeze is in the meter cupboard, not the fridge.

What you can do with that. ADAC’s advice still holds: fill up shortly before noon, since prices may only rise once a day at 12:00, and compare stations in its app². Verivox’s advice is the gas version of the same habit: compare when the letter arrives¹. Neither is glamorous. Both are worth more than a forecast.