Favored producers of electricity from renewable sources (OIE) were paid only EUR 260,000 this year, due to the fact that the market price of electricity for most of them was higher than the incentive price.
Until this year, except for a few exceptions last year, the market prices were always lower than the incentives, so the privileged producers, 26 of them, received multi-million sums based on incentives on an annual basis.
Incentives are paid by citizens and the economy through the electricity bill, item OIE2, while the Government annually allocated money from the budget for item OIE1, and recently transferred it to Enegy company (EPCG). In the beginning, citizens and businesses paid for everything through electricity bills.
According to the data of the Montenegrin Electricity Market Operator (COTEE), 291.66 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity were produced in eight months, the market value of which is EUR 33.08 million.
COTEE and EPCG purchase electricity from producers at subsidized prices.
Therefore, out of the currently 23 privileged producers (three have left the incentive system), 11 of them had a price lower than the market price, so they received incentives from COTEE.
The companies AB power group, Barcode, “Đekić”, Eco solar system, Igma energy, Invicta, “Krnovo green energy”, Nord energy, Simes engineering, hydro power Kutska and Sinenergy received incentives.
Igma Energy, owned by Igor Mašović, received the largest amount of incentives, EUR 73 thousand.
Due to the increase in the price of electricity on the stock market, at the beginning of the year, three privileged producers decided to withdraw from the incentive system. The companies in question are Hidroenergy Montenegro, BB hydro and Viridi progressum. The owners of Hidroenergy Montenegro are Ranko Radović and Oleg Obradović, and BB hydro Blažo Đukanović and Igor Burzanović.
Although there were announcements that more producers should leave the incentive system, this has not happened so far.
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