The debt of NPC Ukrenergo to universal service providers (USPs) to compensate for the feed-in tariff for residential solar power plants (SPPs) is approximately UAH 2 billion, and the company's goal is to pay off these debts by the end of 2023, Board Chairman of NPC Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudrytsky has said.

"We are left with debts to the residential SPPs in the amount of over UAH 2 billion. We owe it to USPs. And they owe us five times more, and at the same time they require us to pay off the debts. I understand that they are not paid according to the old debts of Guaranteed Buyer and Energoatom. But at the same time, our task is to pay off this debt by the end of the year," Kudrytsky said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

He also called on USPs to provide Ukrenergo with acts corrected under its comments, which are the basis for payment. He explained that since June, USPs have been entering into the company's Datahub (a repository of all commercial accounting data) information about how much electricity a particular residential plant has generated.

"This allows us to make a certain analysis. It turns out that solar power plants generate twice the installed capacity at night, and other strange things happen that are not consistent with the laws of physics. We asked the USPs to correct these discrepancies, and some of them have already done that," Kudrytsky said.

He also said the number of USPs that provide updated acts is gradually increasing [previously, it was known only about suppliers in Mykolaiv, Kyiv and Vinnytsia regions].

"We will definitely just come to the point that all the acts with USPs will be signed. (...) My forecast is that all USPs will sooner or later be forced to provide correct data (...). I don't see the point in continuing these 'Sorrows of Werther.' It's better to do this earlier, finally understand that we will not allow an unreasonable overestimation of this service, and complete this process," Ukrenergo head said.

In an interview, he said the company began to pay off in several areas. In particular, it paid off debts for limiting industrial renewable energy sources for this and last year in the amount of almost UAH 5 billion, so the amount of debt for limiting green generation is less than UAH 200 million.

According to Ukrenergo, at the beginning of November, the company's total debt for compensation of the feed-in tariff to the USPs for 2022-2023 was UAH 2.7 billion (including VAT).

In turn, during the same period, the debt of USPs to Ukrenergo for the transmission of electricity, funds from which are the source for paying compensation for the feed-in tariff to residential solar power plants, amounts to UAH 12 billion.

The USP debt, as indicated by Ukrenergo, is another reason for non-payment for electricity from residential solar power plants.