Bulgaria scraps electricity export fees from July

SOFIA: Bulgaria will scrap the export fee on electricity from July and oblige hundreds of small wind and solar energy producers to sell output on the power exchange, parliament decided on Thursday.

The Balkan country regulates power costs for households in the European Union's poorest member, but businesses have to buy their electricity on the local power exchange.

The moves are aimed at boosting liquidity of the bourse and

decrease price volatility that has unnerved traders and business consumers. At present only few state-owned power producers offer their output on the exchange.

Bulgaria was the only EU country to levy a fee on power exports, but a European court ruled that the charge should be lifted.

The scrapping of the fee will help to bring prices closer to those across the region. But it will also open an 80 million lev ($45.8 million) gap on the books of the electricity network operator, which could respond by increasing power transport fees, said the head of parliament's energy commission, Valentin Nikolov.

There are 372 small renewable power generators, accounting for total installed capacity of 750 megawatts, that would have until October to start selling their output on the exchange.

They produce about 1.5 million megawatt hours of electricity a year - about 7 percent of volumes currently traded on the exchange.

The number of these generators mushroomed in Bulgaria in 2011 when the state guaranteed it would purchase their output at preferential prices.