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How much does working from home in Germany hike up your electricity bill?

Lots of people in Germany have been working from home during the pandemic. As well as having a shorter commute from your bed to desk (or couch), it also has an impact on your wallet.

People have to pay more for electricity when working from home.
People have to pay more for electricity when working from home. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Patrick Pleul

A new study sheds some light over how much working from home pushes up the cost of electricity bills. 

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, lots of workers have been doing ‘home office’ instead of going into their office, to help control the spread of infections. 

Spending more time at home means you consume more electricity. But how much more expensive is it? Experts from a comparison portal have done the maths.

While working from home, an employee’s electricity bill can increase by around up to €94 a year, says comparison portal Check24.

READ ALSO: How households in Germany can tackle rising energy costs

According to their calculation, the use of a laptop, monitor, desk lamp, kettle or coffee machine and the use of an electric cooker or microwave oven result in additional costs of around 25 to 43 cents per day.

For the calculation, researchers assumed that:

  • An employee, minus holidays and public holidays, works 220 days a year from home and pays an average price of 33.9 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity
  • During this time, they operate a laptop for eight hours a day (0.12 kWh), a monitor (0.24 kWh) and an LED desk lamp (0.056 kWh)
  • They also use a kettle (0.33 kWh) or a coffee machine (0.25 kWh) for 10 minutes and an electric cooker for half an hour at lunchtime (0.5 kWh)
    or a microwave for five minutes (0.066 kWh)

When it comes to phone charging, experts say it doesn’t make much of a difference to household bills. “Charging a smartphone barely plays a role in the additional costs in the home office, because only 0.3 cents is due per charging process,” the authors of the study explained.

Calculated over the 120 days that serve as the basis for the home office allowance (more on that below), an employee pays €30 to €51 more for electricity.

German households pay some of the highest costs for electricity in the world. 

Electricity prices for consumers reached an all-time high in December.

Since the year 2000, household electricity bills have on average doubled in price.

A three-person household in Germany now pays an average of €93 a month on their electricity bill, up from €41 twenty years ago.

READ ALSO: German electricity prices ‘among highest in the world’

“If you use more electricity in your home office than you previously thought, you can increase your monthly rate with your provider to prevent larger additional payments at the end of the contract,” said Steffen Suttner, Managing Director Energy at Check24.

“It’s also worthwhile for consumers to compare whether other providers offer cheaper prices for higher consumption.”

Additional costs for heating, water or Internet push bills up even further. 

Should Germany have a permanent home office flat rate?

During the pandemic, workers can reduce their annual tax bill with the home office allowance (Home-Office-Pauschale). It allows people to claim €5 per working day (up to €600) in the home office for a maximum of 120 days per year. The lump sum is in place for the years 2020 and 2021. 

The German government introduced it to help compensate employees for the higher electricity, heating and internet bills they face due to home office.

Bavarian finance minister Albert Füracker called on the new federal government to permanently continue the allowance, which expires at the end of this year. 

People want to know “what they can or have to prepare for next year”, said the CSU politician.

Füracker said Bavaria is committed to a lump sum of €1,000 per year because the working world had changed as a result of the pandemic.

As The Local has reported, Germany’s Labour Minister Hubertus Heil wants to permit more remote working in future.

READ ALSO: German Labour Minister wants to allow remote working after pandemic

Vocabulary

To consume – verbrauchen

Additional costs – (die) Mehrkosten

Average price – (der) Durchschnittspreis 

How much more expensive is it per year? – Wie viel teurer wird es pro Jahr?

We’re aiming to help our readers improve their German by translating vocabulary from some of our news stories. Did you find this article useful? Let us know.

Member comments

  1. Would be interesting to see if there was any increase at all in total outgoings resulting from home office working when you consider the savings made on commuting costs, especially with the high costs for petrol and diesel…..working at home for me means that I am no longer driving 500 Kms/ week to and from work…

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LIVING IN GERMANY

Living in Germany: ‘Bubatz’ law clears final hurdle and spring arrives

This week we get into the new cannabis legalisation law, Stolpersteine and the start of spring in Germany.

Living in Germany: 'Bubatz' law clears final hurdle and spring arrives

Germany’s ‘Bubatz’ law to come into force from April 

The German coalition government scored a success on Friday when the upper house – the Bundesrat – approved a new law to legalise cannabis. From April 1st, adults in Germany will be able to possess up to 25g of the drug in public spaces, and in private homes up to 50g. Meanwhile, growing up to three cannabis plants will become legal. The law also allows from later this year non-commercial “cultivation associations” or cannabis clubs for adults, where up to 500 members can grow cannabis collectively and supply it to each other for personal consumption – with a maximum of 50 grams per member per month. 

Although government ministers rightly call this a ‘turning point’ for drugs policy in Germany, the law has been watered down since the first draft and has faced obstacles. In fact, it was a little surprising that the law got the go ahead in the Bundesrat in the first round. The opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, oppose the legislation and it was thought the matter would be referred to a mediation committee, causing delays. But there was no majority to do that and the law passed. Despite this, opposition politicians voiced their concerns on social media. Markus Söder of the CSU called the move a “fatal mistake”, adding: “Germany is harming itself and jeopardising the health of the population.” But the coalition stands firm. Finance Minister Christian Lindner tweeted after it was approved: “Bubatz bald legal” – “weed soon legal.”

Tweet of the week

Stolpersteine or stumbling stones are small memorial blocks scattered all over neighbourhoods in Germany and Europe. The artwork is meant to help us remember the individuals who died at the hands of the Nazis, with each stone including where the victim lived, their date of birth and their fate.

Germany in Focus podcast 

In this week’s episode, we give a citizenship law update (of course!), and we get into what to know about the EU elections in Germany, the history of Berlin techno and why it’s a cultural heritage site, how skiing resorts in Germany are struggling and what’s open at Easter. Check it out here or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave a review and a rating or let us know your feedback. You can email the team directly at [email protected]

Where is this?

An Easter bicycle

Photo: picture alliance/dpa/Jens Büttner

Germans are known for their cute floral and Easter egg decorations at this time of year. The Osterschmuck are usually found on trees, gardens and balconies, but a red bicycle on the Baltic Sea island of Poel got the Easter treatment this year. 

Did you know?

The temperatures have been fluctuating in Germany but one thing for sure is that spring is officially here. On March 20th, the Spring Equinox – called Die Tagundnachtgleiche in German – arrived, meaning we officially made it out of winter. The beginning of spring sees several celebrations in many cultures around the world and is often linked with traditions related to rebirth, renewal and fertility. Among pre-Christian Germanic tribes such as the Saxons, a spring Goddess called Ostara, was celebrated on the Spring Equinox with a feast day and other traditions such as planting seeds or decorating eggs. Traditional symbols for Ostara included rabbits and ducklings. It is widely believed that some of these traditions were later adopted and Catholicised, leading to the creation of Easter (Ostern) as we know it today. Nowadays there is also a lot of chocolate bunny eating involved in a German Easter. Don’t forget that Good Friday (Karfreitag) on March 29th and the following Monday after Easter on April 1st are public holidays in Germany!

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