Source: Electricidad Magazine
The consultant’s monthly report indicates that in order to advance in electricity portability, the flexibility or temporary suspension of supply bidding processes for regulated customers should be considered.
“If progress is to continue to be made in the area of electricity portability, a regulatory change would be required to make the new bidding processes more flexible or temporarily freeze them, in order to have enough space for a successful transition between the two schemes, to the extent that the new government decides to persevere in the introduction of the figure of the marketer.”
This is according to the monthly report of Systep Ingeniería The report addresses the definitions and challenges of the electricity supply bidding process for regulated customers, which is scheduled for this year and which will have to be considered by the future government authorities that will take office in March.
The consulting firm currently considers what is established in the Law on the matter, where “if the CNE projects a deficit of regulated contracts in a 5-year window, a bidding process must be carried out (Art. 131° LGSE)”.
This is the case of the 2022/01 process given the projections made by the CNE in the 2021 Final Bidding Report (net deficit of 5,014 GWh for the year 2027), so with the current regulations it is not possible to postpone the bidding to another year”, it is explained.
Marketer
The document also states that, “although the current regulations require bidding in case of need, this dynamic is not consistent with the establishment of the figure of the marketer”.
“If long-term tenders continue to be carried out, the volume of energy naturally available to the marketer would be limited, which could lead to a dilemma. One option would be to affect the energy allocated to the current suppliers of regulated customers, which would maintain high levels of overcontracting for several years. Alternatively, if it is favored to limit the impact on existing contracts, the space for marketers will be, at least initially very limited, precisely in the period when there is an opportunity to offer more competitive rates to end customers”, says the consultant.
