Serbian power exchange that was opened in February should lower the price of kilowatt on open market. Unlike households that buy electricity from EPS at unique price, industry signs separate contracts with suppliers. With this power exchange, companies could find out the price on wholesale market, and sign more favorable long term contracts with suppliers.
SEPEX is one of the instruments which improves the electricity market liberalization and prevents monopoly in kilowatt purchase.
As Dejan Stojčevski, technical director of SEPEX explained, electricity market integration and merger in the entire Europe implies that electricity can be bought in Norway, and spent in Serbia. With SEPEX, it cannot happen that end-customers are left without electricity and they will be familiar with the unique hour price of electricity at wholesale market.
In our region, HUPEX, Hungarian power exchange, has the highest liquidity. Having in mind the number of participants, it showed excellent results after two months of work.
Currently, there are seven participants on our exchange. EPS is one of them, but in the following period between 10 and 15 new participants are expected and among them large world energy companies from Europe.
Stojčevski added that when it comes to electricity, Serbia is definitely the leader in the region due to its geographic position and implemented solution. By July, there will be 12 exchange participants and by the end of year minimum 20. All of them shall contribute to exchange liquidity.
Power exchange does not serve for the entire consumption demand, but only for those amounts that serve for balancing short term demand. That means that around 10 percent for industry customers shall be traded on the exchange. However, that shall enable industry customers to know the price of electricity.
Slobodan Ružić from Energy Savings Group believes that SEPEX shall not determine single price immediately but it shall have the impact on bilateral contracts concluded by the companies for electricity purchase annually. Thus, companies will not conclude contracts with higher price, if they see that the price on the power exchange is lower.
REGIONAL EXPANSION On European level there are exchanges that initiated market mergers, out of which two groups are the largest. One is comprised of Western Europe countries, and the other of Scandinavian countries. By the end of 2017, Serbia plans to merge with power exchanges from Central Europe which include Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Czech Republic and thus provide unique price for this part of the Old continent. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania that do not have power exchanges are still questionable, transmits Serbia-energy.eu
