How can Ukrainian energy overcome the crisis – expert’s opinion

Lending, ban of import, resolving the issue of payments of a feed-in tariff, and monitoring and shaping the development of events will be able to save the situation in which the Ukrainian energy sector has been quarantined due to coronavirus.

Such a vision was expressed by Andrian Prokip, an expert at the Energy Program at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future in a comment for Kosatka.Media.

The state allowed consumers not to pay utilities during quarantine, but these non-payments will be a strong blow to companies, the expert said.

“The state should provide a mechanism for the actual on-lending of such payments: the company will cover the amounts that will come from consumers through a loan from a state bank. Then consumers will pay, companies will return the money. And the state must pay the fee for using credit funds by cutting some programs”, he said.

In the case of gas supply, this may be commodity lending at the expense of Naftogaz resource, which is in storage.

Another tool is the government taxed electricity imports. But for the integrated power system, it would now be worthwhile to completely abandon imports.

“Because it’s a blow to the volume of production, and in conditions when we are already reducing electricity production, this is a factor that could compensate a little”, Prokip said.

The next thing to do is to review PSO of Energoatom and reduce the share of mandatory buybacks at a lower price so that Energoatom can enter the market and offer relatively cheap electricity for industrial consumers, the expert says.

It is also necessary to carry out measures to prevent the incidence of workers.

“They are already doing this. Some thermal power plants “encapsulated” workers: they work in shifts for 2-3 weeks, living at work, where they are equipped with food places, lodging for the night, showers”, Prokip said.

He noted that it is necessary to monitor other critical categories of workers – dispatchers, in particular.

Another event is to accelerate the solution of the issue of payments at a feed-in tariff.

“And we need some headquarters to monitor the situation in the power system in a slightly different mode than what is happening now, and to carry out standard shaping, how the power system can behave under different conditions of the development of the crisis”, he said.

In the worst case, the expert believes, it should be possible, as planned in 2014, in the event of an emergency in the energy sector, to give permission to manually control the power system.

To recap, according to Andrian Prokip, there are 3 main problems in the Ukrainian energy sector now: consumption of energy resources, the health of qualified personnel and payments.

Leading researcher at the Institute of History of Ukraine NAS of Ukraine Andriy Martynov sees the main threats in monopolism and maladjustments.

CEO at ETG.UA Volodymyr Shvedkyi believes the situation in the energy sector is close to catastrophic.

Tags: gas, NNEGC "Energoatom", electricity, feed-in tariff, PSO, quarantine

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