Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 23
By Emil Ismayilov - Trend:
Electricity export from Azerbaijan as part of Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey energy bridge will begin after solving commercial issues, a source on the energy market of Azerbaijan told Trend Jan.22.
The source said that all necessary technical work was carried out in order to ensure the supply of electricity within the energy bridge. "After solving commercial issues it will be possible to proceed with the transit and export of electricity," he said.
The source didn't mention the possible date of starting electricity export from Azerbaijan to Turkey through Georgia. "It is difficult to talk about the date of the launch of export operations for now,"said the source.
Earlier, Azerbaijan's Energy Minister Natig Aliyev said that the electricity export from Azerbaijan via the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey route may start by late 2015.
He said it is planned to solve all technical and commercial issues related to the transmission and transit of electricity within this corridor in 2015, which will create conditions to start the export.
In this project, Georgia will act as a transit country, which will also export electricity. First of all, Azerbaijan will be able to pay off the debt for electricity supplied by Turkey to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, and then enter the European market. Such a scheme of repayment of energy debt to Turkey will make it possible to fully load the generation capacities in Azerbaijan, which will further improve the efficiency of electricity production in the country.
The generation capacity of energy power system in Azerbaijan has increased by 30 percent over the past five years. Currently, the capacity of Azerbaijan's power supply system is 7,105 megawatt.
The country is able to produce nearly 24 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, which allows export of 2.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
Edited by CN
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