The new draft regulation that Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA) prepared and opened to public opinion offers new applications to protect rights of 8.5 million eligible consumers in Turkey.

The draft regulation brings important applications for protection of the rights of consumers.
Some of them could be indicated as follow. The contract between the consumer and the electricity supplier company will not be longer than 2 years and has to indicate energy price clearly. Unless it is decided on the contract, the supplier company cannot make changes that are disadvantage for the consumer.

Consumers will be informed 45 days earlier

If the supplier company has the authority to make changes in the active energy price, the consumer has to be informed 45 days earlier. Consumers must also be informed that unless they accept the change, they have the right to abolish the contract.

Supplier companies will solve the demands and complaints of the consumers in 15 days and inform the consumers that they are solved. Consumers could pay their electricity bills by credit card with single or partial payments.

Consumers should be informed in all aspects

In a previous explanation, Mustafa Yılmaz, Chairman of EMRA, stated that citizens with eligible consumer status should be very careful about the supplier contracts they will sign. Saying that eligible consumers should know about their rights and obligations very well, he underlined that supplier companies should inform the eligible consumers in all aspects.

How to become an eligible consumer?

By 2017, the limit of annual electricity usage for being an eligible consumer has dropped from 3.600 kWh to 2.400 kWh. With this reduction, consumers who pay 82 TL (21 US $) for the electricity bill per month, become eligible consumers and get the right to choose their electricity supplier. With this new structure, 8,5 million consumers got the right to become eligible consumer.

Turkey broke a new record in wind energy in 2016, with 1.4 GW additional installed capacity.

Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) published “Global Wind Report 2016”. According to the report, global wind power in 2016 saw a 12.6 percent increase and reached a record of 486.7 gigawatts (GW). Report stated "In 2016, 54.6 GW of installation globally was achieved for the first time in a single year."

China remains global leader

According to the report, China remains global leader with 23.3 GW of new installed capacity. The country now has more than 168 GW of wind power installed. It is more than the entire European Union members' wind capacity.

The report showed The European Union installed 12.5 GW of gross additional wind capacity in 2016. It said, “Europe’s numbers were surprisingly strong, actually surpassing 2015 for Europe as a whole on the strength of Turkey’s 1,387 MW, the first time that country has broken the 1 GW barrier in a single year. The EU 28 was down by just a few percent, led by Germany, France (1,561 MW) and the Netherlands (887 MW – most of which was offshore).”

Turkey broke its record

The report also indicated that Turkey broke its record for annual new installations. It said:
“Turkey (1.4 GW) also broke its record for annual new installations. Beyond the EU member states, Turkey is the largest market, crossing the 6 GW mark in terms of total installed capacity. Looking ahead, Turkey’s wind sector looks promising.”

Source: GWEC

Article
Influence of regulatory uncertainty on capacity investments – Are investments in new technologies a risk mitigation measure?
By: Bastian Schwark

Understanding the investment decisions of power companies is vital for a regulator as particularly deficient investments in generation capacity could jeopardize the market in the long run. Considering potential risks that could hamper investments, the paper focuses on regulatory uncertainty and firms’ behavior to mitigate risk. 

The question of how uncertainty influences investment decisions has been explained by a number of researchers. In the specific case of regulatory uncertainty it is agreed that organizational strategies and decision processes are influenced. However, it is not agreed whether this form of environmental uncertainty triggers or hampers investment decisions. One stream in literature supports the argumentation that regulatory uncertainty results in reducing, postponing or cancelling of decisions. An opposing stream questions the direct consequence of regulatory uncertainty and the link to postponements of investment decisions. The argumentation can be based on either a real-option perspective that states that an organization exposed to regulatory uncertainty can have a benefit from small initial investments. Or the resource-based view can be predominant that argues that environmental uncertainty increases the probability that a company invests proactively.

The paper provides a literature review to give a better understanding of the impact of regulatory uncertainty on firms and their corporate responses to mitigate the risk associated to generation investments. We further discuss potential investments in new technologies in the current environment (especially CCS) as risk mitigation measure in the light of regulatory uncertainty.

Finally, we propose a new framework to give an answer to the question of generation investment under uncertainty. By matching the factor of irreversibility with the degree of perceived regulatory uncertainty, firms will follow different investment strategies, depending of the combination of the factors and value of the option to postpone based on the real option approach. Therefore, at highly regulatory uncertainty firms may prefer to invest in new technologies because of their high flexibility and high option value and rather postpone large irreversible projects.

Read More…

Source : GWEC -Annual Report 2016

Source: Turkish Electricity Transmission Company