BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 23
Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
2021 is particularly important for the gas sector of Georgia, Director of the Energy Community Secretariat Janez Kopac told Trend.
"The natural gas market concept was approved in early September 2021. Unfortunately, the natural gas transmission system operator has not been certified, but I hope that the shortcomings will be eliminated soon and this process will be completed. It is also planned to establish a natural gas market operator company in September-October 2021," he noted.
As all processes are part of a single chain, their consistent and timely implementation is very important, he said.
"The Georgian Energy Exchange has been established in 2020 and is currently in a synchronous testing regime with the balancing and ancillary services market operator. Hourly trading on the electricity day-ahead market and balancing and ancillary services market will start from 1 January 2022 (originally scheduled to start on 1 July 2021)," Kopac moted.
According to him, Georgia switched to the next stage of electricity market opening as specified in the Electricity Market Concept approved in April 2020.
"HPPs with capacity below 50 MW were deregulated from 1 January 2021. In addition, from 1 July 2021, large consumers with an average consumption of more than 0.4 million kWh per month connected to the 35-110 kV voltage level entered the free market (both wholesale and retail)," he said.
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