E-Newsletter

The Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) member countries’ energy regulators gathered in a roundtable meeting in Istanbul, Turkey.

Officials from Georgia, Romania, Albania, Russia, Greece and Azerbaijan gathered at the roundtable meeting in Istanbul with the invitation of Turkish Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EMRA).  In this meeting, presentations about the regulatory framework, the appearance of markets and interconnection systems were made by the participants. Improving the co-operation between the regulators were also discussed in the meeting.

BLACK SEA IS SURROUNDED BY COUNTRIES WITH SIGNIFICANT ENERGY POTENTIAL

EMRA Chairman Mustafa Yilmaz who directed the roundtable meeting; stated that Turkey is an important route for the energy resources of BSEC countries. “We believe that energy will play a crucial role not only in contributing to the welfare of the region countries but also in the establishment of regional peace and stability”, Yilmaz said.

Yilmaz expressed that Black Sea is surrounded by the countries with significant energy potential and BSEC countries deepened their relations in the field of energy. Yilmaz said,

"Regional market integration has gained great importance due to the recent global changes. In this context, we give importance to the evaluations made on such platforms. The countries are working for collaboration in different regions. We reiterate our desire to cooperate with the regulatory authorities of the BSEC members in order to contribute to the energy cooperation of the region. "

At the roundtable meeting, the proposal of the energy regulatory authorities of the BSEC countries to develop cooperation in a more systematic framework was agreed. With the proposal of EMRA, it was decided that the works of collaboration should be structured under a forum framework. The studies to form the main status of the Forum will be continued by EMRA.

Source: EMRA

Serhat Cecen, the Chairman of ELDER Association of Electricity Distribution System Operators noted that the rate of non-technical losses in Turkey has dropped from 25% to 15% in the last 5 years.

ELDER Chairman Serhat Cecen, gathered with energy correspondents in Ankara. In this meeting, Cecen, highlighted Turkish DSOs' fight against non-technical losses and said, “The rate of the losses has dropped from 25% to 15% in the last 5 years. By excluding some of our regions, the average of our regions catch OECD figures by 8%.”

Cecen emphasized that customer satisfaction in Turkey is increasing and said, "It is observed that the rate of satisfaction is lower than the others in 3 regions where the against with illegal electricity usage is higher. This is a problem that we will solve together.”

MANY R&D PROJECTS ARE DEVELOPING

He underlined that the benefit of technology is getting higher and said “R&D projects such as GIS, SCADA systems, encrypted transformers are the main actors in our operations against illegal usage. An R&D project developed by one of our DSOs, enables remote maintenance of the meters. By this project, the illegal electricity usage reduced from 65% to 15% in a pilot district. It happened in a short time. This application is spreading throughout the region.”

In addition to these projects ELDER is currently executing two other projects named PEAKapp (www.peakapp.eu) and SmarterEMC2 (www.smarteremc2.eu ) which are funded under Horizon 2020 program. SmarterEMC2 project will have a workshop which outcomes of the project will be presented at the European Utility Week on 4 October 2017 in Amsterdam.

Pre-licensing tenders for 710 MW wind power plants launched on Wednesday.

As renewable and domestic energy resources gain importance, Turkey aims $1.2 billion investment through the Wind Power Renewable Energy Resource Areas (YEKA) project. A series of wind power plants will be built across Turkey. These power plants will have an installed capacity of 1,000 megawatts.

According to the data of the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, the potential wind power in Turkey is reported to be 48,000 MW. Currently, the installed wind power capacity is approximately 6,000 megawatts.

On Wednesday, pre-licensing tenders for wind power plants were launched. After the 3 day-tenders pre-licenses for 710 MW wind power plants in 11 regions will be given.

Article
Estimating Marginal Cost of Quality Improvements: The Case of the UK Electricity Distribution Companies
By: Tooraj Jamasb, Luis Orea, Michael Pollitt

The main aim of this paper is to develop an econometric approach to estimation of marginal costs of improving quality of service. We implement this methodology by way of applying it to the case of the UK electricity distribution networks. The estimated marginal costs allow us to shed light on the effectiveness of the current UK incentive regulation to improve quality, and to derive optimal quality levels and welfare losses due to sub-optimal quality levels. The proposed method also allows us to measure the welfare effect of the observed quality improvements in the UK between 1995 and 2003. Our results suggest that while the incentive schemes established by the regulator to encourage utilities to reduce network energy losses leads to improvement in sector performance, they do not provide utilities with sufficient incentives to avoid power interruptions. We find that the observed improvements in quality during the period of this study only represented a 30% of the potential customer welfare gains, and hence there is still a large range for quality improvements.

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