YEREVAN. - The long shutdown of the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) may not impact the power tariffs.

Chairman of the Public Services Regulatory Commission of Armenia (PSRC), Ruben Nazaryan, stated the aforementioned in the parliament today, introducing the PSRC Action Plan for 2016.

According to him, the excessive shutdown of the power plant will take place in 2017 and will presumably last for about 90 days (May-July).  

The shutdown will take place during the tariff year 2016-17 (lasting from August till July). It will be possible to understand the load it will create for the tariffs, as well as to what extent the NPP energy will have to be substituted by a more expensive one, after the precise deadlines of shutdown are agreed with the Russian side (which supports the work on extending the operations of NPP).

“It may be not exactly 90 days, but a little less. I can’t say yet. As to the economic effect, the load on tariffs will grow here, but weaken in another place: in August 2016, the 23.4 bln AMD debt of the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) will be excluded from the tariff.  That is, one may cover another. But it will be possible to finally say this after the estimates for the tariff year 2016-17, which will start in 2 months,” Nazaryan stated.