OREANDA-NEWS. May 14, 2014. The “Market Council” Non-Profit Partnership and “ATS” OJSC executed a warning issued by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia). Changes were made to the Regulations for selecting investment projects for construction of generating facilities functioning on the basis of using renewable energy resources.

On 1st April 2014, FAS issued a warning to the “Market Council” Non-Profit Partnership and “ATS” OJSC to stop actions (omissions) for abusing market dominance. The companies imposed disadvantageous conditions of the Contract on connecting to the trade system of the wholesale power market upon market participants (Clause 3 Part 1 Article 10 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”).

The Regulations for selecting projects, which is an appendix to the Contract on connection, set the requirements for enforcing obligations of the participants of selecting investment projects for construction of generating facilities that use renewable energy sources. The Regulations set excessive and disadvantageous requirements for the small companies, the aggregate installed capacity of which does not exceed 2500 MW, for enforcing obligations: these participants had to obtain guarantees from bigger market participants that are their competitors.

Thus, only those small companies that are included in the same group of persons with the large market “players” can receive the guarantees.

On 10th April 2014, the “Market Council” Non-Profit Partnership approved changes to the Regulations for selecting the projects that provide for the common conditions for all participants of selecting investment projects and exclude the requirements on guarantees from large companies, which enforces FAS warning.

“The adopted changes expand the list of participants that can make a claim for supplying electric power with use of renewable energy sources to the market and, therefore, increase competition between these participants, enabling to select the most efficient ones”, pointed out the Head of FAS Department for Control over Electric Power Industry,