FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Some 12 million German households' power bills will fall by an average 2.4 percent from January as 115 energy companies pass on lower wholesale prices and levies to support green power, internet portal Check24 said on Monday.
The price of German retail power - one of the most expensive in Europe - is controversial because consumers are paying heavily towards the production of renewable energy.
A four-person household using 5,000 kilowatt hours a year will see their average bill fall to 1,443.50 euros (1,150 pounds) for next year, compared with an average 1,478.70 euros now, Check24 said in a statement.
The portal, which compares consumer prices for services such as energy, telecoms and insurance, said bills would have been lower if it was not for higher network transport fees to be charged by most local grid firms next year.
Power wholesale prices for year-ahead delivery have fallen by a quarter since the start of 2013, while the average green power support payment - a mandatory element of retail bills for funding the expansion of solar and wind energy - was recently cut by 1.1 percent.
Among companies planning price cuts are the city utilities of Munich, Frankfurt and Darmstadt as well as eastern German enviaM, which is majority owned by big utility RWE (DE:RWEG), tables supplied by Check24 showed.
An RWE spokesman said he could not give a final forecast for the pricing policies of all retail units in the wider group, but that prices this year had been kept stable.
In a results call last week, E.ON (DE:EONGn) managers declined to sum up a trend for all its German retail units.
Companies have until Nov. 20 to notify customers of planned price moves from Jan. 1, 2015.
Another sector leader, EnBW , has already said it will trim retail prices in 2015.
Online portals monitor prices and encourage supplier switches in the fragmented and competitive German retail power market.
Energy industry group BDEW said recently that according to its checks some 36 percent of all households had changed their supplier at least once since liberalisation in 1998.
(Reporting by Vera Eckert and Tom Kaeckenhoff, editing by Susan Thomas)