Last week, minor amendments to the Regulation have been published in the Official Gazette dated 15 May 2017 and numbered 30067.
The unlicensed generation facilities using renewable energy resources have become very popular in Turkey given that the developers of certain electricity generation facilities are provided an exemption from the licensing requirements under the Regulation on Unlicensed Electricity Generation in the Electricity Market published in the Official Gazette dated 2 October 2013 (the "Regulation"). Accordingly, electricity generation facilities using renewable energy resources with an installed capacity of less than 1 MW were not required to make an application for an electricity generation licence or pre-licence thus not subject to the strict scrutiny of the Energy Market Regulation Authority ("EMRA") of Turkey.
The first amendment is in relation to the total capacity limit of the unlicensed generation facilities. As per Article 12 paragraph 3 of the Regulation, total capacity of generation facilities connected to a network from low voltage level (voltage with effective intensity level not exceeding 1000 volts) increased from 30 (thirty) per cent to 50 (fifty) per cent of the transformer power, provided that the distribution transformer to which such production facilities are connected is a transformer of the Relevant Network Operator. If the transformer belongs to the applicant, the rule remained the same, so that the generation capacity would then be equal to the total transformer power.
The second amendment revised the reporting deadline of the excess electricity energy by the Relevant Network Operator under Article 17 paragraph 3 of the Regulation and postponed the notifications by two days. With the amendments introduced, the Relevant Network Operator shall notify the relevant distribution companies in relation to the amount of excess electrical energy given to the Network until the fourth of each month.
The amendments also changed the notifications that shall be made to the market operator under Article 18 and 20 of the Regulation. Accordingly the relevant network operator shall notify the market operator of the values of the meters included in the electricity supply/draw units configurations used for the settlement aggregations through the Market Management System in accordance with the schedule provided for the notification. Similar amendment is also introduced to Article 20(1)(e). Accordingly, relevant distribution companies will notify the market operator -- through the Market Management System in accordance with the schedule provided for the notification-- in relation to the payments to be made to each unlicensed generation companies as part of the purchasing requirement under Renewable Energy Resources Support Mechanism aka YEKDEM.
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