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Leading dailies in Germany are reporting today that power companies across the country will be hiking electricity prices once again in the February to April period, affecting millions of households.

This comes at the heels of a January price hike.

“The wave of electricity price increases in Germany is not abating. According to figures from the comparison and brokerage portal Verivox, 86 utilities have announced average price increases of 8.1 percent for the months February to April,” writes Germany’s flagship Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) here. “For a family with an annual consumption of 4000 kilowatt hours, this would mean additional costs of around 100 euros per year.”

Already in January, “543 basic utilities had already increased their electricity prices”, according to the FAZ. “The average increase was 5.4 percent.”

The price hikes come just as Germany’s electricity rates have become among the world’s highest. Annually tens of thousands of German households see their power cut off because they are unable to pay their bills.

A large portion of the rate hike is due to the feed-in tariffs for green energies such as wind and sun.