Attorneys-at-law in Central and Eastern Europe
Poland: Amendment to Energy Act imminent
21.08.2009
The Polish parliament is planning to amend the Energy Act. One aim is to accelerate the procedure known as "reserving access and power in the electrical grid" for those not intending to invest in the energy sector themselves. However, this will cause complications, especially for wind farm developers.
Kategorie: en_Allgemein
Erstellt von: administrator
The amendment includes new regulations to prevent players not intending to invest in the energy sector from reserving - and thus blocking - access points and power grid capacity. In particular, those applying for access to an electricity source exceeding 1 kilovolt from the power grid will have to pay an advance on the access fee as well as to attach to their application an abstract and a map section of the regional development plan (RDP) for the particular site. Both obligations will be felt by investors, bearing in mind the considerable expense involved.
Under the existing legal regime and code of practice, an investor applied to the municipality competent for adoption or revision of RDP only after having ensured that the investment would be possible and profitable - in practice after the conditions of access to the electricity grid were fixed. In the future, investors will have to wait until the municipality has completed its regional planning before applying for network access, a process that could last months.
In any case, the advance on the access fee must be paid within seven days from the day of filing the application. Otherwise the application can be rejected. The advance on the access fee is 30 PLN per kilowatt of the access volume applied for, though not exceeding the expected access fee or 3 m. PLN in total.
For more detailed information on the planned energy law amendment, please refer to the article by attorney Małgorzata Zamorska, partner with bnt Warsaw, published in the magazine "Nowa Energia" Nr. 4 (10)/2009 (in Polish only).
Under the existing legal regime and code of practice, an investor applied to the municipality competent for adoption or revision of RDP only after having ensured that the investment would be possible and profitable - in practice after the conditions of access to the electricity grid were fixed. In the future, investors will have to wait until the municipality has completed its regional planning before applying for network access, a process that could last months.
In any case, the advance on the access fee must be paid within seven days from the day of filing the application. Otherwise the application can be rejected. The advance on the access fee is 30 PLN per kilowatt of the access volume applied for, though not exceeding the expected access fee or 3 m. PLN in total.
For more detailed information on the planned energy law amendment, please refer to the article by attorney Małgorzata Zamorska, partner with bnt Warsaw, published in the magazine "Nowa Energia" Nr. 4 (10)/2009 (in Polish only).
