Stronger industrial activity holding back PPC market share loss task

Industrial activity is showing signs of recovery, increasing electricity demand in the sector suggests, but, quite paradoxically, this complicates the main power utilty PPC’s effort to reach bailout-required market share reduction targets.

Data provided by IPTO, the power grid operator, and LAGIE, the Electricity Market Operator, shows increased electricity demand figures in the industrial sector for the first five months of this year.

Total electricity demand totaled 21,223 GWh in the first five-month period, up 17 percent compared to the equivalent period last year, while, of this total amount, 3,010 GWh, or 14 percent, concerned high-voltage consumption.

PPC covers high-voltage electricity demand virtually single-handedly. Independent firm Elpedison’s high-voltage electricity supply is limited to ELPE (Hellenic Petroleum).

This essentiall means that the greater the demand for high-voltage electricity, the more difficult it will become for PPC to reach bailout-required retail electricity market share reduction targets.

PPC’s high-voltage supply is believed to be slowing down the rate of its overall retail electricity market share loss by about half. Looked at from the opposite perspective, if PPC was not supplying high-voltage electricity, its retail electricity market share loss would be progressing at double the current rate.

According to forecasts, Greek industrial activity is expected to keep improving for the rest of 2017.