The first year lump

Mosenergo refuses to perform an investment program due to low tariffs of Mosenergo, not in accordance with low tariffs set by the non-profit partnership (NP) “Market Council” as part of competitive power selection (COM) for 2009 and is ready to suspend its investment program. This was announced on Friday by the general director of Mosenergo Vitaly Yakovlev.

In December 2008, NP “Market Council” discussed for almost two weeks the power prices entered in 2009.

As a result, generating companies remained unhappy with the final decision. So, for Mosenergo, he set a tariff for a capacity of 370 thousand rubles per 1 MW per month, which is 30% lower than the company's price application. According to Yakovlev, such a tariff will not allow "the refund of invested investments with the required rate of profitability."

The payback period of new capacities in this situation can be 18 years. So the company will suspend the implementation of the next stage of its investment program - the construction of new PSU -420T blocks at the TPP -12, 16, 20 and 25 - before the reassessment of the validity of investment investments.

In addition to Mosenergo, prices are reduced in the applications of the General Company SUEK (Kuzbassenergo and TGK-13) and OGK-1 (about 10%), a source familiar with the final decisions of the “Market Council” told Interfax.

Meanwhile, power contracts were introduced precisely in order to ensure the implementation of investment programs of generating companies. New capacities should automatically be sold in the market in order to compensate for the costs of their construction. And energy companies gave the “market advice” a recommendation for tariffs based on these costs.

When approving free prices for capacity for 2009, energy filled a number of tables provided by the “Market Council”. He used these data, as well as a number of own indicators, but the energy sector does not understand how the calculation was conducted. None of them were admitted either to calculations or discussion.

The head of the NP “Council of Energy Manufacturers and Strategic Investors of Electric power” Igor Mironov told the agency that the procedure for setting the price for whom is not clear and transparent. The head of the development of the electric power sector and marketing in the Gazprom electric power industry (controls 53.47% of Mosenergo) Denis Fedorov said that the calculation methodology, as well as the scenario conditions laid down in the model, were constantly adjusted and officially not yet presented, despite repeated appeals.

Industry experts, however, expected the underestimation of the tariff: this opportunity was already actively discussed in the market. Analyst AK Bars Finance Elena Yushkova agrees with the general director of Mosenergo that many power engineers will now have to reduce investment programs. And when the tariffs for power are underestimated, there are problems with the return of investments, because the payback periods increase significantly and, therefore, the interest of investing in new capacities decreases.

However, the “Market Council” states that Mosenergo is misunderstood the situation. The long -term power model of the power market is still being discussed, its short -term model is currently operating, and the transitional periods are valid on the wholesale power market. Thus, Mosenergo is mistakenly links the fact of the establishment of an economically reasonable price for the sale of power in the transition period in relation to the already built generating equipment with investment projects planned to enter the long -term perspective.

01/18/2009 / Ekaterina Bogomolova, the material was published in the newspaper No. 6 dated 01/19/2009.