Industry: Paving the way for PPAs with power producers

A matter of a few weeks is the issuance of a decision by the Minister of Environment and Energy, Kostas Skrekas, which will deal with the problem of concluding bilateral Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) between industry and power producers.

OT has access to information, according to which the provisions of the decision will exclude from the revenue recovery mechanism (ceiling) in the wholesale electricity market the revenues of power producers from the sale of electricity with PPAs to energy-intensive consumers.

The obstacle

It is noted that the big problem for concluding such contracts was that the wholesale ceiling did not exclude income from such agreements.

Kostas Skrekas had committed to the general council of the SEV – Hellenic Federation of Enterprises last month to address this problem, in order to pave the way for the implementation of PPAs between electricity companies and mainly high voltage industries.

Sources, therefore, report to OT that the Energy and Environment Ministry is already close to an agreement on the establishment of the exception. In fact, the power plants that will sell electricity to the factories with physical delivery will not be subject to a ceiling. Their income will therefore not be withheld to subsidize electricity bills.

The units

According to the information, this measure will be applied in the first phase for thermoelectric, lignite and natural gas units, followed by RES.

Entering into PPAs helps large consumers to secure electricity at competitive prices for a longer time. At the same time, electricity companies, once the revenues of the specific units are excluded from the ceiling, have greater hedging margins for providing low prices.

PPC

This measure also unfetters PPC for the renewal of contracts with the industry, as sources of the Ministry of the Interior state.

Big businesses electrified by high voltage would be left in the air… from this year as the public company did not have the room to maneuver to grant competitive prices,

RAE

At the same time, by its decision, The Regulatory Authority for Energy-RAE increased the percentage of electricity transactions that the dominant electricity supplier (ie PPC) can make outside the Energy Exchange.

More specifically, it raised it from 20% to 30%. In this way, the public company has more freedom to form a competitive basket of electricity prices, which it can provide to its customers.