“In 2019, the Ministry of Economic significantly strengthened the control of the power plants which had been granted mandatory procurement rights. JSC “Enerģijas publiskais tirgotājs” has also completed all on-site inspections of power plants operating in the mandatory procurement system. As a result of these inspections, in 2019 mandatory electricity procurement rights were cancelled for 21 power plants, which has allowed to prevent potential increase in total costs of MPC over the next 10 years by around 31.5 million EUR. At the same time, a number of power plants have reduced the amount of electricity to be purchased in the framework of mandatory procurement,” – said the Minister of Economics Ralfs Nemiro, when evaluating the achievements in control of power plants last year.
“Careful control of power plants will continue this year as well. As it is known, from this year the monitoring of the energy sector will be carried out by the State Construction Control Bureau, which intends to carry out at least 50 on-site inspections of power plants in parallel with the control of documents,” the Minister points out.
In 2019, the Ministry of Economics conducted the following inspections:
a verification of the submission of annual accounts; verification of the reports of 104 auditors attached to the annual reports; double checking of payment of taxes by all economic operators; verification of the conformity of all the capacities installed at the power plants; verification of the conformity of all data indicated in the annual reports of the power plants regarding the transferred and purchased energy, verification of auxiliary consumption of power plants; the control group of the Ministry carried out 4 on-site inspections at power plants; examined 119 inspection reports of JSC “Enerģijas publiskais tirgotājs”; examined 59 inspection certificates for compliance with conditions of operation of structures, analysed the results of inspection of compliance with occupational safety and environmental protection requirements.
In addition, an evaluation of overcompensation has been carried out for 22 power plants, 8 decisions have been taken to avoid overcompensation. Similarly, 58 decisions have been taken on the reduction of the volume of mandatory procurement of electricity for power plants, resulting in a reduction of mandatory procurement of electricity by 79,328 MWh per year.
Of the 328 power plants which were obliged to submit the electricity connection diagram of their power plant, 316 electricity generators submitted it within the specified deadline (until 1 June 2019); the electricity connection diagrams of power plants submitted by 134 economic operators were found to be not in conformity with the specified requirements. By the end of 2019, 320 diagrams have been recognised as eligible, 6 power plants have still not submitted electrical connection diagrams for power plants and procurement under mandatory procurement has been suspended for these plants.
At the end of 2019, electricity under mandatory procurement was purchased from 330 power plants, 5 power plants receiving guaranteed capacity payments. At the same time, the support period for 10 natural gas cogeneration plants ended in 2019.