Electricity demand in Turkey ‘alarmingly’ low: Association

ISTANBUL

Electricity generation at natural gas plants has decreased dramatically due to decline in demand, Electricity Producers Association head Cem Aşık said on April 23.

“We expect a decrease of 20 percent in demand this month. The decrease in demand will be 17 percent in May and 4 percent in June, according to our estimates,” he said.

Turkey has been applying strict measures to lower social mobility to curb the spread of coronavirus pandemic since mid-March, including lockdowns in major cities at the weekends.

“Natural gas plants have been affected at the most in this period. These plants are alarming. Their capacity utilization rate shrank to 7 percent in April. This rate is 10 percent lower than the levels in the same period last year,” said Aşık.

Although most of the automotive factories will resume production in the upcoming days, the spot price of electricity is expected to dive 40 percent in April and 15 percent overall this year, according to Aşık.

The highest electricity rate for one-megawatt hour in the spot market on Jan. 21 was 345 liras ($58.3). The arithmetical and weighted average price of electricity for the day-ahead was calculated as 326 liras ($55.1), while one dollar was traded for 5.91 liras.

On April 24, the highest electricity spot price was 326 liras ($46.7), whereas and the average price was 203 liras ($29), according to Turkey’s Energy Exchange Istanbul.

Thermal plants receive 5.8 mln tons of coal

A total of 5.82 million tons of coal was delivered to the thermal power plants (TPP) across Turkey in February, including 3.95 million tons of lignite and 1.87 million tons of hard coal, according to official data released on April 24.

The total amount was 7.22 million tons in February 2019.

More than 58 percent of hard coal was delivered to thermal power plants and nearly 18 percent to coking plants, according to the solid fuels data released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).

On the other hand, 85 percent of lignite was delivered to thermal power plants and 10 percent to industry excluding iron and steel factories.

The highest coverage ratio of production to deliveries was in lignite by 109.5 percent. This ratio was 83.9 percent for coke derived from hard coal and 3.2 percent for hard coal in the January-February period.