We had a period of regulated prices, I think the third or fourth in the last ten years, but we hope it will be the last, because every time we returned to the free market there were some earthquakes and market readjustments, said on Monday, the chairman of the Board of Directors of Hidroelectrica, Bogdan Badea.
”Hidroelectrica's business strategy, over the years, has been based on adapting to the market. I believe that agility when certain market conjunctures or certain legislative changes occur is the company's trump card all along. That's what we've been trying to do over the last five months, to understand the context in which we find ourselves and to adapt to it quickly. There's a certain inertia at certain times that, if perpetuated, makes investors look more reserved at one company or another. And this is probably what happened with Hidroelectrica. We had a period of regulated prices, I think the third or fourth in the last ten years. We hope it will be the last one, because every time we went back to the free market, there were some earthquakes in the market and a resettlement that sometimes did well, sometimes did not do well. The important thing is that this moment has been overcome and, in practice, energy companies that rely on the free market, such as Hidroelectrica, have been able to realize their true value. On the one hand, we relied on the consolidation of the assets that we have, and here the program of upgrading has gone very well in the last year”said Badea, quoted by Agerpres.
He added that there are Hidroelectrica projects that have been „prepared for years, which are reaching maturity and entering the execution phase”, but the bureaucratic area is delaying them.
„This year we will continue on this path in which we rely heavily on investments (...) There are projects that have been prepared for years, which are reaching maturity and entering the execution phase. I have said on other occasions that the unseen part is the bureaucratic part where we have to get approvals, get authorizations and, unfortunately, this process often takes longer than the actual execution. We have the example of Vidraru, which has generated a lot of passion, but which is an investment that has been ready since 2016, with a lot of procurement procedures that, unfortunately, have not been successfully concluded. We managed, however, to sign the contract and enter into the retrofitting program. There, the works are on schedule”, emphasized the Hidroelectrica representative.
In the view of the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hidroelectrica, the national energy system needs flexibility and an understanding of the context.
„We need to have flexibility in the energy system and that is why it is very important to understand the context we are in. In the context, we have a lot of installations, especially in photovoltaics. I am not and I will never be in favour of cannibalization between technologies. I believe that there is room for all technologies, the important thing is that there is a balance between them when you have a lot of photovoltaics. On the other hand, increasing the installed capacity in the less predictable renewable energy area increases the need for balancing and storage capacities. Our focus in the coming period is on storage and hybridization. What we are doing, in addition to what we have been doing traditionally, is to manage the water in the big lakes, in particular for balancing and peak-load. We now channel our energy very much to run-of-the-river power plants (...)”said Bogdan Badea.
In addition to the investments in technologies and storage, the head of Hidroelectrica also explained the company's approach to supplying energy to consumers.
„There are a lot of times of the day when the energy price is very low or even negative, which makes us continue our strategy of purchasing electricity, no matter how much the production will be. Our intention, at the end of the day, is to supply energy at a fair price to the end consumer. The business philosophy has changed. I believe that this bet we made with the entry into the supply market, overcoming the childhood illnesses and the fact that we had to build from scratch the supply activity, which was not easy, but also over many legislative changes, was a winning bet for Hidroelectrica and for the shareholders”said Bogdan Badea.