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At the moment, the grid connection office of the branch “Rosseti Centre Kurskenergo” controls 1,292 contracts in force. In 449 cases, the duration of the contracts was violated by applicants.
In most cases, applicants of the so-called preferential category do not fulfill their obligations under the grid connection agreements. Their fee under the contract is fixed - 550 rubles, while the energy company spends tens of thousands of rubles on connection, depending on the complexity of the project. So, in 2019, the average cost of connecting one “discounted customer”, taking into account the price of materials, amounted to 91.5 thousand rubles for Kurskenergo.
As a result, each year the branch spends about 200 million rubles on the construction of new electric grids for connection of preferential applicants. Financing of these measures is carried out at the expense of the tariff for electric energy transmission and ultimately leads to its cost increase for all consumers.
“Some applicants use the mentioned privileges to electrify land plots to raise their market value, while the actual connection of power receiving devices does not occur,” commented Mikhail Filipkin, the head of the grid connection office of Kurskenergo. “Thus, a significant part of the constructed energy facilities is unclaimed, and the energy company suffers losses.”
Under these conditions, Kurskenergo is forced to actively carry out claim-related work with unscrupulous applicants in order to encourage them to fulfill their obligations, or to compensate for the costs incurred and to pay the penalty.
In 2019, the courts issued 17 decisions in favour of the energy company to recover forfeit and compensation for expenses totalling 4.6 million rubles from unscrupulous applicants. Over 300 applicants received claims from Kurskenergo with the calculation of a penalty for violation of the deadlines for fulfilling contractual obligations.
Penalties are calculated as follows: when connecting for 550 rubles, you will have to pay 5% for each day of delay, if the payment under the contract is different - 0.25% of the amount daily. Such a procedure for prosecuting dishonest applicants is defined in Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 999 dated 05.10.2016.
In the absence of real actions on the part of the applicants, materials on them will also be transferred to courts in accordance with the current legislation of the Russian Federation.
