Utility bills, how to find the best offer on the market using digital identity

Raise your hand if you have not been contacted by a call centre with an invitation to change operator for your bill. This invitation has become more and more pressing in recent months, coinciding with a number of steps that have affected the electricity market, starting with the end of the greater protection system at the end of June for non-vulnerable domestic customers, i.e. those who do not fall into certain special categories (such as the over 75s and social bonus recipients) and who represent the main slice of the user base. But how do you choose the best and, above all, the most advantageous offer? The web is teeming with comparators ready to indicate the solution to all problems, but also the Authority for Energy, Networks and Environment, called upon to supervise the proper functioning of the market, has developed ad hoc tools to help users, the most important of which is the offers portal.

This is the only third-party comparator currently available, managed by Acquirente Unico, which allows you to compare all the offers on the market, not only those related to electricity but also those related to gas, and which has been further enhanced. Thus, for those who have Spid (Sistema Pubblico di Identità Digitale - Public Digital Identity System) or Cie (Electronic Identity Card), the path has become even simpler. It is enough, in fact, to connect to the Authority's offers portal, accessible at www.ilportaleofferte.it, and take a few simple steps.

The first is to be recognised by the system through Spid or Cie. To make the comparison, simply click on the login button and the system will ask you to authenticate yourself through one of the two channels, either by entering your credentials or by framing the QR Code. Once this first step has been taken, you will enter the Portal which has already recognised you and, more importantly, has already retrieved your details, i.e. your electricity and gas bills with the respective operators or the sole operator. At that point, we will be asked to select the supply for which we are making the comparison and we will also have to enter the Cap (postcode) and the code of the proposed supply so that the system can get a precise picture of our consumption and the price we are paying. All elements that, until this latest portal update, had to be entered manually by the consumer.

Once these elements have been entered, the system will ask the user to select the desired level of consumption and, in the case of an offer for electricity, to indicate whether he or she prefers an offer with a banded or single-rate price and whether or not this offer should include the supply of green energy. In the case of gas, on the other hand, the user will have to specify what they use the supply for (cooking food, domestic hot water production and heating) and select the meter class. Then it will be necessary to specify whether the comparison concerns fixed-price or variable-price offers. Once all boxes are filled in, the system will select all offers on the market, starting with those with the lowest price. The user will then have an exhaustive picture of all the available offers and will be able, by clicking on each offer, to understand what the total cost is and what services are included in each offer.