Today in the second reading the parliament adopted the bill "5009" On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Simplification of Connection to Electric Networks ". Experts from an advisory center “Smart Country” (which was found by the UAC) actively participated in its development.

This is an important bill for the agricultural sector, as farms could wait for years to get permission to join the electricity grid!

The document contains progressive norms aimed at simplifying and accelerating the process of connection to the grid.

In particular:

• procedures for allocating land plots for the construction of power lines are simplified, which in turn will help to connect consumers to the grid faster;
• terms reduction: terms of connection to electric networks are reduced in 2,5 times, terms of modification of the StateGeoCadastre are reduced to 1 day;
• connection up to 1 MW is simplified”
• a "single window" is formed for the submission and approval of design documentation for the construction of electrical grids. The electronic system will help to speed up document flow and prevent manipulation of documents.

Also before the second reading, important amendments proposed by the UAC were adopted. They were focused on the increasing of regional grids’ transparency and their accountability to regulatory authorities and public.

Now, in particular, regional grids are obliged to install special systems at their substations, which will transmit their load in real time. That means the information will become available we can clearly understand how much power is available. This removes the corruption component, when in the absence of information connections could be made selectively and for a "fee". After all, previously it was impossible to check the groundlessness of failures to connect to the grid.

Also, regional grids have to publish reports on all purchases on their websites. Formerly, they did not fall under the law on public procurement, making them on their own sites.

At the same time, important proposals of the UAC aimed at protecting consumer interests, reducing the burden of communal services, transparency of regional grids tariffs, strengthening control over the use of consumer funds, improving the service of energy companies were not taken into account.

In order for these changes to be implemented in the electricity market, the UAC experts prepare a new bill, the rules of which are designed to implement these initiatives.