Energy traders provide the full range of end user and producer connection services

When we talk about the energy security of the countries of the region, the licensed energy traders are the ones who first-hand locate not only the problems, but also the direction in which it is necessary to work for its improvement. As a representative of a large Bulgarian industrial group - Konstantin Delisivkov, manager of "ENERGEO" EOOD, which is part of GEOTECHMIN, participated in the discussion "Energy security of the countries of the region" within the framework of Green Week 2023 - the largest regional forum for green transformation, the innovations and industries of tomorrow, organized by Dir.bg and 3E-news.

The manager of "ENERGEO" highlighted two factors that affect the security of the energy market.

"If we have to go back to the basic definition of the concept of energy security and when the end customer feels secure in his participation in this market, one factor is the physical accessibility to the necessary energy for production. The second factor is accessibility and affordable price."

According to Delisivkov, this means that the price of energy resources should not make it impossible for industrial users to reach different markets with their products.

In the last 2 years there has been a significant change in the market. If we go back 10 years, the change in prices on an annual basis between seasons is no more than 15-20%. At one point, the transition between the period of the coronavirus pandemic and its end marked a growth of over 200%. If we take June 20 as a base (note ed. the first day of Green Week), you will see that the difference between hourly prices within the electricity market is 18 times".

According to the manager of "ENERGEO", this shows the large fluctuations within the electricity price market, as well as the challenges facing the industrial consumer, namely "to foresee and manage this risk and to have access to a competitive price of electricity".

"Our system was a guarantor of supplies last year in terms of electricity and natural gas. This allowed us to have a mechanism that reduced the price for business users, limited the growth of the price and these fluctuations, but the uncertainty continues. Just for the week from June 12 to 18 there is a significant increase in the price of gas. There, on days, we have a fluctuation of more than 20% up and down. In this situation, this inevitably affects our feeling of energy security," Konstantin Delisivkov pointed out.

As an important element, given that the installed capacity is also increasing, he noted that the GEOTECHMIN industrial group is investing significantly in electrification, production technologies and those for producing electricity for its own needs. The company also offers project management and project management services related to RES and energy storage.

"For us, as representatives of a large industrial group, it is very important to have predictability of regulated costs. When we talk about energy security, and in the past years we have seen it to varying degrees, there has been regulatory intervention, which has been expressed in additional allowances, changing the structure of regulated prices, which significantly affects the cost of electricity".

If we look at the importance of traders in the system, they provide the full range of end-user-producer interconnection services, administering all relations within the electricity system, either with the Electricity System Operator (ESO), the energy exchange or the Energy System Security Fund , Delisivkov emphasized.

"We were the guarantor and made the payment of compensation possible by financing this process. We also finance the purchase of electricity. This is a wide range of services that a trader provides. Our main mission is to give the complete set of tools to the end user to protect itself from price risk changes, as the main factor of energy security".

According to him, it is very important to have a debate on the regulatory framework and additional components, because planning for this type of trade is not on an annual basis or three years ahead. "Basic productions look at a very long horizon in their business planning and it is good if we want to have new investments and newcomers to Bulgaria industrial

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Konstantin Delisivkov manages Energeo EOOD - a licensed energy trader, part of the GEOTECHMIN Group.

He has many years of experience in regulatory management and governance. He has worked for the largest industrial companies in Bulgaria in strategizing their participation in the electricity and natural gas markets, as well as in managing market risks.

For more than nine years, he has been engaged in the associated interest of industrial energy consumers in Bulgaria, successively holding the positions of executive secretary, executive director and member of the Management Board of the Bulgarian Federation of Industrial Energy Consumers (BFIEC). In the period 2012-2019, he represented Bulgarian industrial energy consumers in the "Electric Power", "Natural Gas" and "Climate" committees of the International Federation of Industrial Energy Consumers in Brussels.

In the period 2015 - 2017 is co-chairman of the "Energy" Committee of the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria (CEIB).

He was Deputy Minister of Energy of the Republic of Bulgaria, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Electric Company EAD.

“And productions, to have this kind of predictability and clarity," Delisivkov pointed out.