This was stated by the director of Systep and academic of the Catholic University, Hugh Rudnick in the last panel of the XVI Conference on Energy Law UC.

Draft bill to reform electricity distribution to be ready by the end of 2017

In December 2017, the draft bill that seeks to reform the electricity distribution segment should be ready, according to Hugh Rudnick, director of Systep, in the framework of the XVI Conference on Energy Law organized by the Catholic University.

The electricity distribution of the future and the regulatory challenges was the topic addressed by Rudnick, who in his presentation detailed the changes that this segment will undergo, emphasizing that “from a radial network it will change to a meshed network where distributed energy resources appear with intelligent networks and several actors”.

Changes

In this context, the Systep director and Catholic University academic also explained that the following distributed energy resources will appear:

– Distributed generation from massive solar photovoltaic and other sources such as mini-hydro.
– Cogeneration.
– Energy storage.
– Electric vehicles, among others.

Because of this new landscape, Rudnick explained, planning needs arise in addition to new regulatory challenges.

According to the specialist, “there will be a need to define a regulatory transition process to face the change in the business model”, adding that a “joint” action of the Ministry of Energy, the National Energy Commission and the Catholic University has already begun to initiate a regulatory reform process for distribution”.

“The objective is that in December 2017 we will have a legal draft of the distribution reform” said the specialist, who invited the attendees to participate in the process of reforming the law, which will be the same as the one used to reform the transmission law.