Ivan Ivanov, Chairman of the Bulgarian Commission for Energy and Water Regulation (KEVR) said that the regulator will not allow sharp increases in the price of electricity and heating.
Ivanov noted that every year (regulated prices are set on 1 July) energy companies offer extremely high price leaps, but KEVR considers these proposals only as an information base, and are almost never approved. For example, last year the average increase that the country’s district heating companies demanded was 41 %. The average increase in the price of electricity generated from high-efficiency cogeneration was 25 %. However, the regulator rejected all these requests, Ivanov noted, adding that in the past year there have been reductions in these prices.
Sofia district heating service provider Toplofikatsiya Sofia seeks an increase in prices of heating and hot water of 15 % as of July 2021. The company is also seeking for an increase of 32 % in the price of electricity produced by its cogeneration plants.
Other companies also demand heating price hikes, ranging from 5 to 71 %. For example, the provider in Plovdiv, the second largest such company in Bulgaria, has requested an increase of 23 %. The highest increases were requested by heating providers in Veliko Tarnovo (71 %) and Pernik (61 %), followed by Vratsa with 41 % increase, Burgas with 33 % and Pleven by 16 %, while the lowest hikes were requested by companies in Varna – 7 % and Sliven – 5 %. In case of electricity production for high-efficiency cogeneration, the price increases range from 17 to 40 %.
