Swelter puts extra strain on independent power plants

Last Monday, Połaniec Power Plant (EP), owned by Belgian Electrabel, had to shut down two generators due to heat, which immediately attracted swarms of journalists. News of malfunctions in state power plants, on the other hand, has not been publicized so widely. The president of Electrabel Poland, Grzegorz Górski, claims that his company is being targeted to prove that a private power plant cannot guarantee energy safety and should be re-nationalized. He also points out that state plants very often pretend to have system failures just to avoid producing below costs: since June 1, in case of energy shortage, they could be forced to produce energy at prices set arbitrarily be the Polish Energy Grid (PSE), operator of the Polish network. The president of Vattenfall Heat Poland (formerly Power Plants of Warsaw), Jacek Dreżewski, also criticizes PSE's pricing policy and asks what happened to the national energy reserve, which according to rough estimations should equal 10-20,000MW. PSE representatives were unavailable for comment. (Puls Biznesu, p.8) J.L.