Many of the analyzes that accompanied the debate on the “end of protection” of the electricity market start from a correct and acceptable assumption: that is, that the free market should allow for more than nine million electricity users, currently subject to the “protection” regime, more economic conditions advantageous. To support this thesis, many studies consider the prices of electricity users for 2022, the year in which it emerges that contracts signed by users in the free market in previous years have supply conditions that are certainly better than those of the protected market. Unfortunately, that is a half-truth.