The president of the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) said yesterday, speaking to the members of the House Finance Committee, that “everyone at the Authority is rushing because the two new units in Dekelia must be operational before the summer of 2025.”
Are we sure that everyone at the EAC is rushing, Mr Petrou?
Are we sure that even if they rush, we will make it in time?
We have been trying to introduce smart meters for a few years now, and there’s always something happening.
The same, and worse, goes for natural gas. Might we face similar challenges with the upgrade in Dekelia? However, this upgrade is directly connected to the electricity sufficiency in 2025, not just to the balance of the electrical system. Make sure – all of you who are responsible – to leave us without power in the summer and then tell us, look, the cost of electricity has decreased.
Yesterday, the Energy Regulatory Authority (CERA) informed the House Finance Committee that the EAC had indeed submitted the applications for the two new gas turbines in Dekelia last November, but the applications were incomplete and needed to be supplemented. And what was the EAC’s response, according to CERA? It requested an extension until the end of July to submit the supplementary documents!
If the procedures are to “rush” at this pace, it means that CERA will start reviewing the final applications in August. And these are not issues that you can decide on in five-six days.
Probably, the licenses will be issued in the autumn of 2024. And then: announcement of the tender, receipt and evaluation of applications, awarding. And won’t there be an appeal to the Tenders Review Authority? There will be. And hopefully, it will be only one.
When is it possible for the signatures for the supply of the gas turbines to be set? Early 2025? Under the best conditions? Will the contractor manage to set up the two units and deliver them by the summer of 2025? In five-six months? Hopefully.
Perhaps Mr Petrou and the rest of the new board need to realize that when they inform the Parliament, and the public through the media, they should not just give assurances that everything will be done on time. Since it won’t be. Or it will be very difficult to do.
They should say it, discuss it, and look for ways to somehow avert the risk of insufficient electricity production in the summer of 2025.
Unfortunately, perhaps the most accessible way to avoid a serious sufficiency problem in a year is directly connected with the NON-arrival of natural gas. Without the arrival of natural gas in 2025, it will not be necessary to take some of the EAC’s units out of operation for the trials in the use of the new fuel.
On the other hand, without natural gas, the under-construction sixth unit in Vasilikos (160 MW), which can only use natural gas and whose operation had long been deemed necessary for the summer of 2024, will remain inactive (from this summer). And it will not be available due to lack of fuel.
The same goes for the PEC units next door (about 200 MW), which may be ready in a year, but without gas, they will just be admired by the Chrysochos family, but no money will come into state coffers from electricity production.
An unbelievable mess. In all things energy.
