CEZ Unwilling to Listen to New Regulator Too

Within three months the CEZ company, which is in charge of electricity distribution in Western Bulgaria, should introduce monthly accounting for its subscribers’ energy bills, Chair of the State Committee for Energy and Water Regulation (SCEWR) Anguel Semerdzhiev told reporters. This means the new deadline the regulator sets is February 1, 2010, before imposing new fines to the Czech company. The Committee pointed out for the Focus news agency that CEZ has started hiring extra personnel for the accounting of meters each month, but CEZ’s management turned out to be surprised at that allegation and repeated they were waiting for a ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) to drop quarterly billing. New head of the company Blahoslav Faimon defended his predecessor’s policy, pointing out he would rather invest BGN 10 million on two sub-stations in Sofia, instead of spending it on printing and delivering monthly invoices.

Weeks ago CEZ declared it would fulfill the order if a five-member panel of the SAC rules so.

SAC is currently discussing on the order of previous chair of SCEWR professor Konstantin Shoushoulov for restoring the monthly schedule of billing. A three-member panel of SAC, chaired by judge Andrey Ikonomov canceled the preliminary execution of the regulator’s ruling, thus giving CEZ a reason to continue postponing its implementation. The decision of the five-member panel, which will be final and irrevocable, is expected within a month.

Semerdzhiev tried to show understanding, explaining that the transition to monthly accounting was complicated and it was important for the regulator that electricity quality and supply security was not disturbed. In his words

CEZ has filed with the regulator a schedule for introducing monthly billion within the next three months, which the committee was prone to agree with.

Since July 2010 the SCEWR will allow CEZ to include only the costs as provided for by the law, the chair of the Committee explained. The company, though, would for sure demand a bigger price increase, calculating in the price the costs for monthly billing as well. The major problem for the consumers is the vagueness of CEZ’s invoices and the energy consumption records, which after the introduction of the ”adjusting” bills system seriously increased households’ costs, instead of lowering them, as initially expected.