State Secretary of Serbian Ministry of Energy and Mining Zoran Predic said that the price of electricity in Serbia will have to be increased in the coming years and that citizens should take this into account when making decisions on their heating system.
According to Predic, the fact is that due to low electricity prices a large number of households are still using electricity for heating, but the prices will be increased in the next few years in order to reach market level. He said that long-term social policy can not be driven by energy, because it undermines the entire energy system in the country, adding that the support for vulnerable customers is regulated through local authorities.
Director of Economic Planning in state-owned power utility EPS Miladin Basaric presented the data which corroborates the fact that citizens are relying too much on EPS for heating. He said that the decrease of temperature by one degree Celsius during winter months leads to an increase in electricity consumption by 1.5 to 2.5 %, adding that this increase was even higher in this month, since the temperatures were lower than the average. During this transitional period, when district heating systems are not yet operational, citizens mostly use electricity for heating. Because of that, in the last seven days EPS recorded increased consumption by about 3 GWh per degree Celsius. According to Basaric, the decrease of temperature by 6.5 degrees Celsius led to an increase of 20.5 % in electricity consumption.
