Debts on balancing electricity market continue to grow, threaten energy system – Ukrenergo head
Debts on the balancing market, where its participants already owe NEC Ukrenergo almost UAH 30 billion, and the company some UAH 18 billion, create a huge problem for the energy system and need an immediate solution, Board Chairman of Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudrytsky has said.
"On the balancing market, debts to us continue to grow rapidly. This is due to the fact that some decisions allow certain consumers not to pay for electricity consumption; they cannot be turned off, and there are several thousands of them," Kudrytsky told Interfax-Ukraine.
He also said the company is initiating a revision of the list of such consumers, "because this cannot continue."
"And even the most persistent generating companies, like Ukrhydroenergo, are suffering greatly from this. They simply may run out of financial resources at some point, as they will not be able to withstand this accumulation of debts. I'm not even talking about the fact that we, as an operator, bear this entire chain of debts," Ukrenergo head said.
However, he said donors and creditors of the company are drawing attention to this problem, demanding an answer on how Ukraine will solve it.
Describing the debt situation in general, Kudrytsky said the company has repaid debts on the ancillary services market, which recently amounted to more than UAH 500 million.
"This is an example of the effect that international loans gave us, which we attracted precisely in order to pay off debts. This allowed power plants that provide auxiliary services (reserves) to prepare for this and last winter," he said.
According to him, it was possible to pay off debts for limiting industrial renewable energy sources for this and previous years, worth almost UAH 5 billion, thus, the amount of debt in this area is less than UAH 200 million. By the end of 2023, the company also intends to repay more than UAH 2 billion of debts to residential solar power plants.
At the same time, Kudrytsky said the debts of market participants for transmission and dispatch to the company have stopped growing and "have even been partially repaid;" they now amount to approximately UAH 20 billion and UAH 8 billion, respectively.
