MANS invited management of Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCM) and the Ministry of Economy to explain to the public, rather than they hide behind the inarticulate statements, what was the basis for their conclusion that for this year the projected distribution, actually households and small and medium economy, will spend as much as two percent more electricity than it was planned in previous years.
There is no doubt that increased use of electricity, for which MANS has a doubt that is increased in a way that a part of losses is transferred on the expense of consumers, would create higher projections for use of distributional network, while on the other side that would be implemented into the electricity bills, which in the end makes that the final costumers pay more than they use, and they are directly negatively affected.
There is also no doubt that in previous years total projections of used electricity were incorrect, as well as use of transmission network, because in the meantime, they showed that they were in a much higher amounts than they realized, which final costumers already pay through more expensive and not cheaper electricity.
As one of the illustrative example of incorrect projections of electricity consumption is an example of Steelworks Niksic, for which in 2010 planned spending was 200 gigawatts, and at the end of the year was achieved less than half, while in 2011 was projected consumption of more than 250 gigawatts and achieved a third less than the amount.
Despite these decline use of electricity, and the fact that the Steelworks did not submit any spending plan for 2012, EPCM arbitrarily projected that in that year will spend 150 gigawatts, but actually spent 53 gigawatts. Only in the last year with energy balance spending plan was reduced for Steelworks below 100 gigawatts, but and that was incorrect, because at the end of 2013 this factory spent only a third of that amount.
Beside that, it is widely known that the Aluminium Plant from Podgorica (APP) reduced its production in half, and because of that consumes half the amount of energy then a few years ago, so and that is undisputed fact that shows that the transmission network is used in a much smaller capacity, which the management of Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCM) does dispute.
What is important to explain to the public is that the estimate of total electricity consumption, which includes direct costumers (APP, Steelworks, and Railways) and distribution, directly affect the projection of the volume use of the transmission system, which in the end, in a total amount, is added on the electricity bills of costumers.
For this reason the sizes of the projection of the total energy, that are determined for each year, are very important because they represent one of the parameters used by the Energy Regulatory Agency when decide on the tariffs for electricity.
In the end, it is an amazing arrogance management of two companies to talk about companies’ reputation, when exactly they ruined it, adopting for a years problematic decisions which consequences every month citizens feel when paying bills.
After a series of published documents about the illegal operations of EPCM and METS at the expense of the public interest, there are clear conditions for the State Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation on business of Montenegrin energy companies, and finally someone to be responsible for mismanagement of these companies over years.
MANS
