By KYIV. Jan 3 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Additional guarantees for electricity importers from Europe, provided for by the regulation approved on Tuesday by the government on the specifics of electricity imports in the 2022/2023 heating season, will allow redistributing the released capacities of Ukrainian generation and thus reducing the total number of outages.
"The resolution provides additional guarantees of protection against planned power supply restrictions for those nonresidential consumers whose facilities will consume electricity imported in accordance with the relevant agreements for the period until April 30, 2023," the Ministry of Energy, which is the developer of the draft resolution, said in a press release.
"Additional guarantees for importers of electricity from the EU will redistribute the released capacities of the Ukrainian generation, thus reducing the total number of disconnected subscribers," the ministry said.
The need for additional incentives for imports by Ukrainian businesses was explained there by the fact that European electricity prices are significantly higher than Ukrainian ones.
As the Ministry of Energy said, to avoid manipulation, hourly outage schedules will not be applied if the consumer imports volumes no less than their own consumption in September 2022 – before the application of forced power supply restrictions.
The ministry said that to date, the agreed commercial flows between the EU countries and Ukraine (together with Moldova) amount to 0.7 GW at night and 0.6 GW during the day, noting that these volumes are not enough to fully cover the capacity shortage during the evening peak hours, however, attracting imports will significantly reduce the volume of the imbalance.
"Import of electricity is one of the tools to reduce the shortage of generating capacity in the energy system of Ukraine, which arose as a result of constant Russian shelling of energy facilities since October last year," the ministry said.
The text of the resolution itself has not yet been made public on the government’s website.
