Vattenfall and GASAG Step In Automatically: What Happens If Your Berlin Energy Provider Goes Bankrupt

The Official Rule

Berlin hasn’t needed to imagine what happens when a discount energy provider collapses. Its own commercial insolvency court has processed the paperwork twice, eight years apart, for two of the names most commonly cited in any account of Germany’s energy-provider failures. Aggressive fixed-rate contracts breaking under a sudden spike in wholesale electricity and gas prices is a pattern German regulators have watched recur across the market for well over a decade, and Berlin-headquartered companies have sat squarely inside it more than once. What actually protects your household, though, has nothing to do with which company you happened to sign up with. German energy law requires a designated local supplier to step in the instant your own provider stops delivering, a mechanism called Ersatzversorgung, and in Berlin that designated supplier is not some anonymous state agency: it’s Vattenfall Europe Sales GmbH for electricity and GASAG for gas, the same two companies that already run the city’s everyday Grundversorgung fallback for anyone who never signs a contract at all.

Vattenfall’s own page on the subject confirms it holds this Grund- and Ersatzversorger role for electricity across Berlin (and Hamburg), while GASAG describes itself directly as the Grund- und Ersatzversorger für Gas for the capital. Whichever of the two applies to your household, the switch happens automatically: the network operator (Netzbetreiber) reassigns your connection point the moment your actual provider stops delivering, no application, no phone call, no waiting on anyone’s approval. You keep the lights and the heating on without a single day’s interruption.

That automatic supply is deliberately not meant to be comfortable or permanent. Under § 38 EnWG, Ersatzversorgung is capped at three months from the date it begins. Within that window, the supplying company can also adjust its Ersatzversorgung prices on the 1st and 15th of any calendar month without the notice period a normal contract would require, a rule the Bundesnetzagentur’s own Ersatzversorgung page confirms directly. GASAG’s own current tariffs make the gap concrete rather than abstract: its regular Grundversorgung gas rate runs 11.64 cents per kWh plus a 9.52 EUR monthly base fee for a typical apartment, while its Ersatzversorgung tariff, using that same 9.52 EUR base fee, charges 12.42 cents per kWh for the equivalent consumption bracket, a markup that looks small per kilowatt-hour until it’s multiplied across a Berlin winter’s heating load. The same Bundesnetzagentur page confirms you can switch away to any provider of your choice at any point during those three months with no notice period required at all. If the three months pass and you haven’t signed anything, you’re rolled over automatically into ordinary Grundversorgung, at Vattenfall’s or GASAG’s own standard rates, not left waiting and not cut off, just moved into the same default tariff you’d have landed in if you’d never signed a contract in the first place.

The part of this that actually deserves your attention is financial, not logistical, since the supply question resolves itself automatically. Verbraucherzentrale Berlin’s own guidance narrows it down to three moves that matter most in the first days. Put the cancellation of your SEPA mandate or standing order to the failed provider in writing, since once an insolvency court has actually opened proceedings you’re no longer permitted to keep sending it money regardless of what your old contract said. Take your own meter reading yourself and pass it along to both the network operator and whichever of Vattenfall or GASAG has become your Ersatzversorger, because that single figure is what separates what you owed the collapsed company from what you now owe the fallback supplier. And get written confirmation of the exact date your Ersatzversorgung began, a detail that matters here specifically because it starts the clock on the six-week retroactive-switch right described further down this page.

Money you’d already paid in advance, a signup bonus, a Guthaben sitting on your account with the collapsed company, none of that returns to you on its own. Verbraucherzentrale Berlin is blunt about the mechanics: your claim goes into the Insolvenztabelle once proceedings formally open, filed the same way any other creditor’s claim would be, and what you actually get back, if anything, depends entirely on what remains in the estate after secured creditors and the administrator’s own costs are paid first. Berlin’s own history, covered next, is the clearest illustration of just how modest and slow that can be, which is exactly why the registration step is worth doing regardless of how small the sum looks on paper: skipping it is the one move that guarantees a zero.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels

Berlin’s Own Cautionary Tale, Twice Over: Lition Energie and FlexStrom

This isn’t abstract regulatory theory for Berlin. On 28 October 2021, Lition Energie GmbH, a Berlin startup founded in 2017 by Richard Lohwasser and Kyung-Hun Ha that had built a blockchain-based marketplace for renewable electricity and partnered with GASAG itself and RTL’s Sparwelt, filed for insolvency at the Amtsgericht Charlottenburg. Around 20,000 households nationwide, supplied with gas and green electricity through roughly 40 employees, were affected. According to WirtschaftsWoche’s contemporary coverage, wholesale energy prices had risen more than 500 percent that autumn, investors pulled back committed funding, and remaining suppliers began demanding prepayment in the millions, the same underlying squeeze that has forced dozens of German energy retailers out of business since. White & Case partner Dr. Christoph Schulte-Kaubrügger was appointed Lition’s provisional insolvency administrator that same month.

Lition wasn’t the first time that exact combination, a Berlin energy retailer and the insolvency court on Kaiserdamm, had to sort through a mass consumer collapse. On 12 April 2013, FlexStrom AG, a Berlin-headquartered discount electricity provider built around a prepay model where customers who paid a year or more in advance got the cheapest rates, and plenty who didn’t renew found themselves owed money when the company failed, also filed at the Amtsgericht Charlottenburg. It was, at the time, the largest consumer insolvency proceeding in German corporate history: roughly 835,000 customers nationwide, with claims eventually exceeding 500 million EUR. The administrator appointed to untangle it was the very same Dr. Christoph Schulte-Kaubrügger who would handle Lition’s collapse eight years later. As of 2026, according to Tagesspiegel’s reporting, around 370,000 creditors are still registered in the FlexStrom proceeding, and after thirteen years, payouts are finally scheduled to reach them in the fourth quarter of 2026, a reminder that registering a claim with an insolvency administrator is worth doing even when the eventual payout is small and the wait is measured in years rather than months, exactly the caution Verbraucherzentrale Berlin’s own guidance gives every household going through this today.

The Six-Week Window, and What Actually Changed in 2025

Most explanations of Ersatzversorgung stop at the three-month cap, which makes it sound like waiting out the clock is your only real option. There’s a sharper lever, and Berlin has direct proof it applies here: guidance published specifically for Lition Energie’s own affected customers confirmed that anyone who signed a new supply contract within six weeks of falling into Ersatzversorgung could have that contract backdated to the actual start date, sidestepping the pricier fallback tariff almost entirely rather than merely capping how long they were exposed to it. Grid-operator FAQ guidance on the underlying rule describes the same right in general terms, and it applies regardless of which of Berlin’s two Ersatzversorger, Vattenfall or GASAG, your household happens to fall into.

One thing worth flagging if you’ve read about ordinary energy switching elsewhere: since 6 June 2025, Germany’s Wechselprozesse Strom 2.0 reform changed how routine electricity supplier switches work, cutting the technical process down to within 24 hours instead of the roughly one to two weeks it used to take, but it also closed off backdating a new contract to a date before it was actually signed, for the kind of switch you’d initiate yourself rather than one forced by a provider’s collapse. The retroactive right that applies specifically inside Ersatzversorgung is a separate, narrower provision, and grid-operator guidance is explicit that it survived that 2025 reform untouched. In practice, that means the faster 24-hour process now works in your favor once you actually decide to leave Ersatzversorgung, even outside the six-week window, but the backdating option itself really only exists if you move within those first six weeks.

Step by Step

1. Don’t panic about the lights or the heating. Ersatzversorgung through Vattenfall (electricity) or GASAG (gas) has already started the moment your provider stopped delivering, no action is required on your end for the supply itself to continue.
2. Put a written stop to your SEPA mandate or standing order for the failed provider today, not next week, since payments that go out after proceedings open aren’t recoverable the way a properly registered claim is.
3. Walk to your own meter and write down what it says, then send that reading to the network operator and to whichever of Vattenfall or GASAG has become your fallback supplier.
4. Ask in writing for the exact date your Ersatzversorgung began, since that single date starts the six-week clock for a retroactive switch.
5. Shop for a new contract inside that six-week window if the retroactive backdating matters to you, otherwise you’re only limiting how long the pricier fallback lasts rather than avoiding it for the period already used.
6. File your claim for any prepaid credit or bonus with the insolvency administrator as soon as one is named, treating a small, slow payout as still better than the guaranteed zero of not registering at all.
7. Keep the three-month deadline in view regardless of the rest, since Vattenfall’s or GASAG’s own standard Grundversorgung rates take over automatically once it passes.

Compliance Note

This page explains the general framework around energy provider insolvency and Ersatzversorgung under the EnWG, but this is not legal or financial advice, and specific timelines, prices, or claim procedures can vary by case. For your specific situation, confirm current details with Stromnetz Berlin, Vattenfall, GASAG, or the Verbraucherzentrale Berlin.