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No plans to increase electricity tariffs: minister

20 October 2015 14:27 (UTC+04:00)
No plans to increase electricity tariffs: minister

By Nigar Orujova

The issue of increasing electricity tariffs is not being considered in Azerbaijan and it is not on the agenda, Energy Minister Natig Aliyev told reporters on October 20.

“All the talk about changing electricity tariffs in Azerbaijan are rumors,” said Aliyev, adding that neither the Energy Ministry, nor the Tariff Council have reviewed this issue.

The energy minister noted the possibility that some are attempting to benefit from these rumors on the eve of the [parliamentary] elections.

At present, the wholesale price of electricity in the country is 0.041 manats ($0.039) per kilowatt/hour. This is the eighth year the country has a single retail electricity tariff worth 0.06 manat ($0.057) per kilowatt-hour.

The main sources of electricity generation in the country are gas (92 percent), hydroelectricity (7.9 percent), while alternative sources still take only 0.1 percent.

The Azerenerji company is the main producer of electricity in Azerbaijan, having over 200 substations as well as eight hydro power plants and 14 thermal power plants.

The country’s power industry achieved significant results for the last 10 years, increasing the export potential of the country to a projected six billion kWh.

There are 7,200 megawatts of installed capacity in Azerbaijan’s power supply system, which now produces about 24 billion kilowatt hours annually, allowing Azerbaijan to export 2.1 billion kWhevery year.

To develop this sphere, Azerbaijan for the first time in the Post-Soviet region, recently began installing generators based on piston-type engines at its power plants.

The generators were installed at the Baku Thermal Power Station, which produced over 383.9 million kWh of energy in the first nine months of 2015.

This year, Azerbaijan generated 17.2 billion kWh of electricity in January-September, or 1.2 percent more than in the same period of 2014. In 2014, the country produced 23.11 billion kWh of electricity, 6.7 percent more than in 2013.

The country increased electricity exports by almost two times since the beginning of this year. Azerbaijan exported $14.1 million worth of electricity in January-September 2015, compared to $19.9 million in the same period of 2014.

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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’s staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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