Renewable Energy Developers Protest Grid Access Fees
Developers of renewable energy projects in Bulgaria urged the country's energy regulator to revise a recent decision introducing higher power grid access fees as it would result in lower preferential prices at which they sell their electricity, undermining their ability to repay loans they took to implement their projects.
The new fees would lead to a 10% drop in revenue for wind power projects and between 5% and 39% reduction for solar projects, depending on their completion date, Bulgarian Wind Energy Association CEO Sebastian Noethlichs told a news conference on Wednesday. In his words, corporate loans taken from local banks for the purpose of building new solar and wind energy parks totalled 2.0 billion levs ($1.33 billion/1.02 billion euro).
Local developers of renewable energy projects will lose more than 220 million levs as a result of the regulator's decision, Nikola Gazdov of the Bulgarian Photovoltaic Association told the same news conference.
BGWEA also said the introduction of the new fees was not preceded by a public debate and the companies operating in the sector had not been duly informed, and warned that the European associations of the wind, photovoltaic and hydroelectric power industries will alert the European Commission about the case.