The Causes of the Electricity Losses are Being Reviewed

In the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources of RA took place a working consultation dedicated to the issues of energy accounting system improvement, as well as the causes of the electricity losses and the ways of the reducing possibilities.

All the rings of the energy system participated in the consultation-producing stations, "Gasprom Armenia" and "Electric Networks of Armenia" companies, representatives of the service companies, the members of the "Energy Research Institute" and the Public Services Regulatory Commission.

By the Ministry’s working group have already been performed studies related to aforementioned issues and outlined certain steps to make energy balances more realistic, to improve the quality of services providing to consumers and investments efficiency, for the modernization of energy accounting system and stabilization of the financial situation of the companies by the reducing of the energy systems losses.

The Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Yervand Zakharyan welcomed the participants and noted, that as the result of discussions need to be approved a plan comprehensible and acceptable for all interested sides, for improving the energy accounting system, the reasons of losses and for its reduction.

Before the discussion, the Minister Yervand Zakharyan touched upon the financial and economic situation of energy system of today, estimating it, to say the least, not well-off.

-There are great debts accumulated in the system. The total size of loans of only state commercial enterprises of the system reaches 13 billion drams, and the "Electric Networks of Armenia" company’s credit portfolio is about of 224 million dollars.

The servicing of these loans is not intended in the rates, which is an additional burden for the system.

Besides, the "Electric Networks of Armenia" company has accumulated about 15 billion drams in debt to the state electricity generating companies, said Yervand Zakharyan.

The Minister also said that the issue of improving of the accounting system and of losses is a serious problem for the energy system.

This issue, by the way, has the most public significance and one of the issues of great public concern.

- From 2009 till now the losses of energy system has not decreased a percent, while studies have shown, that the 1% reduction of losses in the two-year period can provide 5.1 billion revenue, said the Minister.

According to him, in some of the post-Soviet countries the energy systems' losses, are about of            9-10%.

During the 2013, in the Electric Networks of Armenia losses amounted to 13.39% / including trading losses of 2.27% /while the allowable limit approved by the regulatory commission is of 11.2%.

Over the same period, in High-Voltage Electric Networks the power losses amounted to 2.03%.

-The situation is bothersome in the overall energy system. The so working is no longer possible, we need to review our approaches and do everything possible to correct the situation, said the Minister.

He also noted, that as a result of the discussions have to be developed a document containing all suggestions of the sides.

"The developed document should be on the table for all of us and become our work program for the upcoming years," said Yervand Zakharyan.