Moldova will purchase electricity on the wholesale market from at least two sources.
And the share of electricity purchase will be determined depending on the difference in the price offered by suppliers. This is provided for by amendments to the Electricity Law, which the Parliament adopted on Friday in the first reading. As Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development Andrei Spinu noted, the amendments to the law were developed by the department to improve the reliability of Moldova's electricity supply and diversify the sources of electricity supplies. He explained that in recent years, Moldova has purchased electricity from a single supplier. However, the natural gas supply crisis in October 2021 revealed risks to Moldova's energy security in the context of a significant dependence on energy imports from a single supplier. This crisis has affected not only the gas market, but also the electricity market, a market where the main supplier of electricity is currently the Moldovan HPP, located in the Transnistrian region and owned by the Russian company Inter RAO. Considering that the Moldovan HPP reduced production during the gas crisis, being a producer using mainly natural gas, 32.4 GWh of electricity was received from Ukraine without a contract in October 2021 alone to meet national electricity consumption. The Deputy Prime Minister noted that the current situation emphasizes the need for at least two winners in tenders organized for the purchase of electricity by suppliers who resell the purchased electricity at regulated prices to end consumers. Since the general tender rules result in a single winner, a number of amendments have been proposed in order to improve the reliability of electricity supply in order to create a balance between obtaining the lowest price and achieving a high degree of reliability of electricity supply. To do this, the law proposes to replace the single criterion of “minimum price” with a set of objectives pursued by the auction, including the objectives of ensuring the security of supply, thereby creating the possibility of determining several winners in tenders for the purchase of energy. Thus, participants in the next auctions will have to buy electricity from at least two sources as a measure to improve the security of the country's energy supply. It is planned that the National Energy Regulatory Agency will develop an instruction that will establish quantitative ratios for purchases from the first two significant bidders, depending on the percentage difference between their prices. For example: if the difference between the first two bidders is less than 5%, they will be contracted at a ratio of 70-30%, if the difference between the offered prices is 5%-15%, then the contract ratio will be 80%-20%, and if the difference will be more than 30%, then only one winner will be chosen. As Andrei Spinu emphasized, these changes are planned to be applied starting from tenders for the purchase of electricity, which will be held in February-March 2022, and the existing contracts for the purchase of electricity expire on March 31, 2022 // 21.01.2022- InfoMarket.
