Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is a conference on Bogdanka Coal Mine. It will be devoted to the preliminary financial and operating results for Q1 and Q2. I welcome all of you analysts, journalists, and representatives of the boards of companies within the Enea Group, and also those who follow us online. The hosts of our meeting today are Mr. Grzegorz Kinelski, President of Enea CEO; Ms. Dalida Gepfert, Deputy CEO, Corporate Affairs; Mr. Marek Lelątko, Finance CFO; Bartosz Krysta, Trade Commercial Deputy; and Mr. Artur Wasilewski of Bogdanka Coal Mine.
We will divide the meeting into three parts. The first one is presentation and discussion by the representatives of the boards. The second one will be a short movie. We want to show you the progress of our latest capital project. And the third and last, last but not least, Q&A traditionally. So, I hand it over to President of the Board, Mr. Grzegorz Kinelski, right now.
Once again, welcome wholeheartedly at this conference on the results of the Group of the Company. Now, in detail, we'll have a presentation and the results, a little bit more about the investment part and the renewables. And I would like to emphasize that we continue as a Group to take part in the process of transformation of what's going on in the Polish energy marketplace in both generation, distribution, and trade. So, we are present and proactive, and we develop these trends.
Our key course of action is development, and we want to be the guiding principle for the next future strategy that we are in the process of approving. It goes through the process of verification and corporate approval. And as we promised, we'll announce it later this year once it's all approved.
Our objective is sustainable development. That hasn't changed. We want to meet the expectations of the shareholders of the market in general. We want to do it while preserving safety and security and the interest of the Group, of the shareholders, and thanks to our staff, our employees, and the management board who are the key assets, like in any company. Other than that, Enea is to play here in Poland, in the Polish electric energy system, a very important role as a stabilizer.
I will develop our plans for the future development, the development of the renewables, of natural gas resources and storage capacity, which serves to this to provide for stability and safety and security of the Polish energy system. Already now, today, we intensify our development in the field of renewable sources of energy.
We have different projects at different stages of development, but we ask for conditions, permits, for hookups.
We develop all of these projects, those that, as we think, will be very attractive within the Group, and we continue our trend to increase efficiency in the key areas of the Group, namely efficiency such as lower cost, higher revenue, and I think this will be a strong pillar and a basis or foundation for the development of Enea in the next years to come, and now I would like to invite you to learn about details about our results and key indicators for the Q3 that demonstrate the results of our efforts as the entire Group at all the stages and all the areas of our operation.
We shall start with the market environment. Once again, welcome wholeheartedly.
Allow me to make a few key comments and observations concerning the most important market indicators concerning electricity, CO2, coal. Generally speaking, the spot market since, say, February is in a side trend. The current price below PLN 440 for the base frequency, and that it doesn't show any bigger fluctuation. The price is within the limits between PLN 420 to PLN 490 during that period. Great fluctuation and increasing in the price of electricity on the spot market.
We can see in the lower left corner that the average monthly price is at about PLN 500, but it's characterized by big fluctuations, volatility. Often the prices were negative even during the entire period of the Q3 beginning with June. We have also a sign of even decreasing trends recently of licenses for CO2 emissions, EUR 70 for the next year. In the Q3 , the price was slightly lower.
Also, prices of coal are characterized by moderate, however, still a downward trend, both if we relate them to the index of the synthetic domestic, PSCMI 1 and API 2 index with supply in Poland. So, the level is slightly below PLN 20 per gigajoule this year, with a slightly decreasing trend for the next years to come.
Just a few words about spreads. So, the unit margin on generation clean spark spreads for gas generation, we can observe a very alarming trend, which is the generation based on coal has been for a longer time non-profitable. So, unit generation of electricity in the same amount gives us negative results. So, it doesn't cover the variable costs. So, with the current cost and the price for emission and the price of electricity, generating electricity using coal gives us a negative unit margin.
What has also decreased is the base clean spark spread that would be characterized with good values in the Q1 of this year, generally speaking, due to a high increase of natural gas prices to be supplied next year, increased by several dozen PLN during the year. And thanks to that, largely the spread has been lower.
It's still positive, but it's at a very low level. A situation very similar on the spot contracts. The trend concerning spread is reversed, but the interdependency is the same. Natural gas is still on plus. So the conditions are very difficult with the price of gas, which is in spot and long-term contracts with the costs of emission license. It's about EUR 100 per MW hour, the price of contracts with the future supply. That means the need to revise our approach to contracts.
It's hard to take decisions about selling electricity generated by using coal with these negative spreads. As we informed you many a time, we have to have a provision to repurchase energy, and that translates into the production strategy and the usage of our units. That would be it.
Now, to the Q3 results, as Bartosz said, it doesn't translate yet so strongly to the results of this year. By the end of the year, we are still selling contracts that we concluded during previous years. From the financial perspective, this quarter is similar to Q1 and Q2 , very similar results. We have decreased sales revenue, owing only to lower energy prices, and the decrease that you can see in Q3 is clearly the same as in the three quarters of this year, generally speaking, and it doesn't translate negatively into the results.
On the contrary, we have record EBITDA margin in Q3 at a level of 23% for the 3%, 22% being the result of the lower revenue and the EBITDA increase. On the other hand, in Q3 , our result was PLN 1.8 billion . It translates positively to net profit.
Last year, the consolidation level we made write-offs in the Q3 at Bogdanka. Now, this year, the result is without write-offs. Hence, even better translation of EBITDA to the year-to-year results. And also, parameters of our covenant to EBITDA is at the level of, which is very satisfactory. Now, it's the result of high EBITDA. LTM for the last 12 months is PLN 8 , 191,000,000 versus PLN 3.6 billion after nine years of the last years. And the net debt is very low as well in our case.
As to the results that we had in individual areas, it's mainly mining, generation, and distribution.
Looking at changes in the Q3 , we had a positive impact of the volume of production of Bogdanka coal production over the quarter of the previous year. And of course, the coal prices are lower, which lowers the growth driven by volumes.
Bogdanka also reduced its production, coal production cost side from the systemic power plants. This seems quite an interesting topic. Over PLN 1 billion is generated from resale of energy. Also, a situation in which we had futures contracts for delivery, and we had to buy back the energy on the market at lower prices, which helped us earn substantial amounts. And of course, the exchange rate differences. We bought these at a higher exchange rate, which gives us an additional PLN 230 million. On the 30th of June, the balancing market changed. Bartosz showed us the spot market. We saw quite a volatility of prices then. But from the perspective of generators, as Enea is, this impacts in a positive way revenue from the power balancing market. Substantial amount achieved there. We've built the distribution. We have a stable situation.
Growth, CapEx, and development of the distribution translates into regulated value of assets, WACC plus PLN 62 million, and our depreciation has increased as well. Also, positive impact of the regulatory account and the balancing differences have no negative results as the year earlier. On the distribution, the result we have achieved is lower than other years, but that's implementation of the tariff as of 1st July of this year. This is a tariff for 18 months into the future, which should be compensated over that period of 18 months. How that translates into results of the first three quarters: result of PLN 5.333 billion with production PLN 556 million, generation PLN 2,664,000,000, of which PLN 926 million is resale of power, which can be perceived as, of course, one-off, will not occur once the energy prices settle. Also, we bought exchange rate differences PLN 630 million +.
We bought, and we have protection of EU ETS. As of 1st of June , we have PLN 248 million from the balancing market. All these events have impact on the divergence of the three quarters. These are the key factors.
Thank you once again.
Hello. Results of Bogdanka coal mine, hard coal mine, particularly Q3 , are perceived by us as positive. In mining, this is a combination of our activity and the global market prices. As we've heard now, we understand how the market is working now, and hence production of energy-based, coal-based creates demanding conditions.
But the management has undertaken measures which adjust us to this dynamically changing environment. 10+ years ago, I remember times when changes took place every four or five years only. Now, the changes occur every number of months. And nonetheless, we have been capable of adjusting.
We have learned our lessons of the past, and results of the Q3 clearly demonstrate that the lesson has been learned properly. We're ready to operate with flexibility. In the past, this may have been less possible, but now working on the timetables of the respective walls that we're working has been quite flexible, allows us to act flexibly with production to the changes. If you look at the dynamics, the growth, we've been rebuilt our production capacities.
Today, daily production is in line with the company's strategy, over 30,000 tons per day, which allows you to achieve, take advantage of economies of scale. Over this year, year- over- year, 30% EBITDA contribution, PLN 700+ million. PLN 22 per gigajoule is the price. On the volumes side, we have contributed positively at PLN 666 million to the company.
So to sum up, very challenging environment, but we're learning, and we're learning very effectively. We are able to respond, and we are managing the CapEx and OpEx effectively, achieving very good results in the Q3. Thank you very much. Moving to generation segment now. EBITDA margin there, higher, substantially higher than on a year-over-year basis. Main key factors have been underlined here by my colleague. We have lower revenue coming primarily from lower price of electrical energy and somewhat lower sales volumes.
However, primarily because of the repurchase result and introduction of balancing service and market services, we have been since June, we've been registering higher EBITDA result. What is, of course, for concern is that production of power production is 20% lower than sales of electrical energy. And the lower left-hand corner shows a substantial jump. Unfortunately, and this trend has been on continuing.
Of course, dominance of conventional sources, our contribution of our production in our production of sales has been declining. Looking at comparison of production, we have decline of generation from conventional sources, some decline in the biomass-fired sources. Generally speaking, we have remained at average same level. Looking at the renewable sources, 490+ MW installed capacity in the three quarters of this year, quite a small difference in terms of power. But if you look at 205 to 299, there is an increase in production and running these sources.
Photovoltaics, we had only 53 MW of power installed capacity there. But the dominant part of the 96 MW were installations that were put online in the Q3 . So, they have not yet been able to generate energy.
The capacity has increased by 15 MW, but tenfold increase production at the same time, nearly 70 MW photovoltaics working in the sector. Thank you.
Now, looking at the distribution, this is in revenue side quite stable. But looking more importantly at the margins, the regulated asset value, WACC, as well as how that translates into reality, WRA, and average weighted average cost of capital in the regulated area, PLN 260 million increased. The balancing difference is PLN 160 million.
Last year, we incurred loss there because of the high prices of energy. Regulated account is positive. On the volume of distribution, this has remained level to a year earlier. But we need to turn your attention to the fact that among the small business, we observe a decline of 4% year- to- year of use or demand. Yes, there's some delay in working of the pilot here.
Looking now on the renewables and impact of distribution to the transformation, green transformation in Poland. Very important role of our distributors and other distributor companies in Poland over the past three quarters. On the right-hand side, the final bar, we see 6.9 GW of the total connected renewables.
This year, it's one GW increase in capacity, which is a strong growth trend in this area. It is for the first time that we're showing at a conference the saturation indicator of our area in these sources. In other words, installed capacity in the area of operation of our distributor has increased twice. The clients, so there's a twofold increase. On the contract signed with the clients and connection agreements, once they are in place, this indicator will increase to four from two. That's on the distribution side in Poland.
Looking now on the quality for the client, on the right-hand side, the SAIFI indicator, the number of improvement since 2019 until today, we continue improving, and the breakdowns are coming down. The upper graph includes the SAIFI driven by disasters also, and this is the count of how quickly we're able to connect them back to the network. Also, breakdowns, improvement of that indicator in 2020, this is quite stable with slight improvement, but that is primarily driven by planned outage.
Here, we are working to improve the overall quality of the network, distribution network, and these CapEx projects drive slight increase in that indicator. On the distribution side, it's important to understand how we prepare ourselves for the future CapEx projects. As distributor, we intend to increase our CapEx spent on this in order to improve the value and effectiveness of the group.
And to respond to the system, we need to create more throughput in the system. And hence, in this, we meet with the contractors on the construction market. We publish our lists of planned investments and tenders. We've introduced more flexible payment forms in order to improve competitiveness in the market. And finally, next year, we will be using algorithms as a support for our investment decisions.
There's lots of choices to make, and hence, AI can assist us in selecting more effectively. In order to implement, of course, in CapEx , we need to have funding, and we continue raising these funds from support areas. We have recently received 123 subsidies for medium voltage networks. This is an important value of a program, which includes a program until 2036, substantial government development program, EUR 16 million. And we intend to achieve a substantial part of that program.
On the renewables, there's much to be done in general, but on one hand, this year, we've started publishing applications for connection so that that makes it transparent and easy for the potential connect, those who wish to connect to the network, so that we can manage the situation, why we decline at a given when we need to, so there are areas where the saturation of sources of renewable sources may be high, so we need to be transparent, and this is why we publish this queue of four connections, and also, recently, we've met with 200 generators of this category of renewables to be clear about the process.
Talking about distribution and trading sales of electricity in this period, we've observed very similar revenues, slightly higher in 2024, while the margin EBITDA has increased basically by nearly PLN 300 million.
It's relatively low level for the time being, being only 1.2% of our revenue. Nevertheless, due to better regulation or easier regulatory aspects as compared to last year and the regroupment of the sales portfolio of B2B customers, we've managed to achieve such a margin level. We have a higher volume of sales by 12, but it has increased by 12%, both in the group of business customers, 15%, and in the group of individual customers. The margin, as I said, basically it's a lower negative impact of regulatory factors on the margin.
As to business activities and sales focusing activities, we have made a great focus on offers for households with guarantees of the source of origin. So 2,000 contracts signed, 13 GW of guarantees of origin, and this offer was welcomed by the market very well. And the customers are using, and they are interested.
They demonstrated with our Enea Optima system. I've talked about it earlier. We want to increase it very much, and we count on a very dynamic development scale in the context of the management and our assistance to customers to manage energy. We have started sale of gaseous fuel slowly but steadily. It wasn't sold 18 months by Enea.
This year, we have the first contracts signed already, and I hope very much that this will become a very stable and pretty important business leg of Enea. Also, green offer for the business community in the guarantees of origin, Seven Terra Energy in 2024. We observe also a high level of interest among the customers. We encourage clients, customers to use Enea Trade 24 platform, which is a more and more popular tool. We use it.
The customers can individually manage the purchase, the servicing of stage or transactions that we propose, and the last thing I'm very proud of, we have won 110 tenders, auctions, which is as much as 64% of those of the bids that we've placed over to ours. The two most important bids were that for the capital city of Warsaw and that for Wrocław, the city of Wrocław, municipality of Wrocław. Talking about our new business line performed by Enea Eco Company.
Let me refresh your mind. The company was established four months ago only. I presented it during the previous conference of results last September. Based on that, the company wanted to develop green transformation of Enea, mainly focusing on trade of green energy and energy efficiency in a broad meaning of the term.
Certain activities, which are very important and very positive over the last several months, have surfaced. We obtained already five wind facilities for municipalities within the realm of Enea Operator. We have already submitted nearly 2,000 bids for our energy efficiency. Over 100 companies are interested in audits, and we are very glad for that. It's only the beginning of our action project to present these bids, to present these offers.
We have focused very much on energy efficiency and the process related to it, the processes that are in line with ESG in a broad meaning of the term. We've defined new energy efficiency policy within the group, and in a systemic manner, we begin to manage the process. Also, if we talk about the green energy for customers as an area, we have started contracting process to contract for business customers, PPA contracts, that's what I mean.
We also started activities to cooperate, I mean, to build RES installations at the customer sites and to sell them or using other business models so that we can optimize cost of electricity to the customers and to make their energy management more green. We also, as I said, sell electricity with guarantees of origin, but also we make an offer, a green offer for individual clients.
So within the realm of Enea Eco, a new green business line by Enea, despite the fact that it's been a very short period of time, as I said, it's from mid-August, you can already see positive results that this nucleus of green energy is growing and we're very glad because of that. Ladies and gentlemen, we're driving towards the end. You've had a lot of information about operational and innovative activities in the group.
Let me present in a very brief information about CAPEX in all the areas and segments of the group. As you remember, each presentation we show this year, we plan to split PLN 4.6 billion , and the bulk of it is CapEx within distribution, and three quarters later, we can say that the largest part of PLN 2 billion spent until today is PLN 1 billion that we allocated for distribution.
The elements which are standard subject to modernization of the grid and development of the grid, but the bulk of these hookups of new renewables, new customers already mentioned by Marek when he talked about indicators and the number of those hooked up or connected installations, distribution. We have 188,000 new renewables out of 9.6 GW of power. So it means a great, many, many, many retail or major or smaller project, capital projects.
Talking about renewables, we are building and we'll show you in a while the installations which are under construction, 41 MW of new capacity under RES under construction. So, this indicates this is not fully satisfactory to us. As you know, it doesn't meet our plans, but we believe that we'll manage to accomplish most of these capital projects in renewables by the end of the year.
As Mr. President has managed, the development of the group, especially that of green energy, is of key importance to us. Talking about conventional energy, the bulk of investment, the bulk of CapEx is to adjust the units to faultless operations, so standard modernization or upgrade of the co-operated units, but also adjusting those in power units from two to seven for cogeneration to take part fully in the market.
Our has already mentioned that we are getting ready for the mining, as you can see, PLN 646 million. That's Bogdanka. So I think it looks spectacular. We are below the plan, but we have made an overview of the capital plan to verify it well so every penny, every PLN that we spend for the development is properly spent.
Now, talking about the development of RES for the period of the last nine months, a very small increase, as I said, in photovoltaics by the end of the year with hope that the level of the installed capacity will increase by 89 MW. As to wind power, we expect part of Bejsce farm, which is, let's say, well, 50%, slightly more than 50% built. But we're glad for other topics which are almost accomplished within two months or so. At the latest, they will be commissioned.
As you can see, all in all, it's about 30 MW of photovoltaics and 20 MW of wind power. This project, as I said, within two or three months will be accomplished. I'm also very glad for the fact that our plan and its advancement and accomplishment of what we decided to tackle a few months ago and what I presented as an opening to demonstrate our plans, our designs, and how we want to achieve it.
Today, I focused on some very realistic or already being implemented at the stage of the project development topics. We have 114 MW, seven photovoltaic projects under construction or being developed. We are at the last stage of corporate agreements, which within two weeks will be concerning another 30 projects, totaling 207 MW of photovoltaics.
Next stage planned for the beginning of next year to be built is 17 projects, 141 MW total. These are much larger numbers as compared to what we have right now and as to increases observed this year. We've focused very much on energy storage, energy warehouses in this all over Poland. We need very many and a lot of big capacity.
At the moment, our plans are and we are preparing and taking these corporate decisions, very specific, three to five locations, 390 MW. These warehouses will work at photovoltaic farms, independent ones that will make profit on the next day intraday and systemic services markets. These projects are very specific, and we are developing them.
We have two projects of our own wind farms, totaling 34 MW, and all that fulfills our funnel that you can see on the left-hand side on the slides, slightly over 1 GW of power of capacity topics that within, say, two years should appear, and we are very glad for that, and of course, there are acquisition projects. We are working on them. We haven't mentioned them. These are very specific projects to acquire wind farms, totaling over 200 MW. It's nine projects in nine locations and one project of energy storage place, warehouse.
We're also analyzing and scouting about more topics. I wanted to show very specific things only that from the perspective of our Enea are already being processed, and we are waiting impatiently that they become ready installations within our portfolio. Let me then summarize the prospects for the future.
In other words, what's likely to happen in 2025? Above all, what we presented to you today. We can expect higher increases in other connections in the area of operation of our operator. A consequence of that will be further push out of production or generation from conventional sources. Looking at the past two years, the level of production has declined from over 60% of conventional to 37%, which means that we expect that additional connections of RES will lead to the reduction of production or generation from conventional.
This small declining or slow declining trend will lead to further decline in CDS margins because this was planned in the past years or contracted in past years, so next year, CDS will be much lower than this year. As a group, we also intend to increase our CapEx and distribution in the next year.
In line with our five-year plan, we will continue investing in development of the distribution network, increasing the value of the group, and our energy efficiency will be improved as a result and also, RES will require substantial outlays. Thank you. Enea's transformation increases in speed. This is a short clip describing a buildout of a wind farm in Świętokrzyskie region. Please join us for this short clip describing.
Elementem zielonej transformacji ENEA jest właśnie zielony skok. Tutaj jesteśmy na farmie wiatrowej Bejsce, gdzie budujemy sześć turbin wiatrowych o mocy ponad
Six turbines, wind turbines over three MW each.
Inne źródła energii, co pozwoli naszym.
This will replace other sources, which will allow our clients to breathe deeper.
Inwestycji w odnawialne źródła energii. Farma, którą dzisiaj wizytujemy, jest tego przykładem.
This farm is an example of our leapfrogging into the green energy area.
We're increasing the rate at which we are moving in this segment.
Ambicją jest rozwój 2,000 MW.
We aspire to install 2,000 MW by 2030.
Resztę budowy, montaż wirników.
We will show you the completion of the buildout, installation of the rotors and further. Now is the time for your questions and responses of the board. Handing over the microphones, please introduce yourself, the name of the institution you represent, and submit your questions.
Dzień dobry, Paweł Puchalski, Santander.
Paweł Puchalski, brokerage of Santander Bank. Let me start by the coal and energy, coal-fired energy, and I'd like to clarify, you've mentioned that you are more power than generation. So next year, you've assumed a decline in production or generation based on coal. Is that clear?
Let me answer that question with a yes. Yes, we assume lower volume of production than this year for the next year.
have one of your first slides, Clean Dark Spread and showing how negative it is. So let me ask two aspects of that. What were the assumptions that you made? You can calculate it on various ways. What are the assumptions for coal price? Is that realistic for Enea, market-based, in other words? And one more question for you. Maybe this kind of graph might be an excellent reason why you may wish to ask for additional reduction of per unit price for coal with your.
Yes, the graphs we've presented, spark spread on the spot market as well as the futures market, were really average for the country. We've applied there various price indices. We've API 2 quotations, the quotations for EU ETS and energy and power markets. You'll have to take into account the actual condition of the sources in terms of their efficiency, of their emissions, and so on.
On the average, this is a situation that's perceived as a reference for our system, entire system. These are not data for Enea alone. Each one of those groups, the data are very coincide. Clean dark spread may not be, let's say, minus and someone has plus 100. This is plus 10, minus 10, maximum 20% one way or the other, depending on their price of coal that they buy and so on.
Second question now. Let me put it this way. We have been purchasing our coal from our mine and from our Bogdanka Group at market prices. And prices for 2025 will be, by all means, market prices adequate to realities of the market. Since I am still holding a mic, let me move to Bogdanka now.
I've just heard that production of electricity based on your fuel will be declining, and you are showing volumes for next year that are lower than the 7.9 million tons that you've planned for this year on the production side. So who would be buying the coal if these prices are what they are?
Well, as you've noted, our group says that it is so that decline will be among the demand will be lower in the group, but also the same will hold true throughout the country. So if we have a problem, then our decline will be the weakest because the Silesian mines will take most of that. Let me ask more for Bogdanka. In the Q3 , you've registered excellent results in my assessment. We're primarily driven by a limited number of preparatory works underground.
Will you have a very low, similar low level of these preparatory works in next quarter? This will be driven primarily by reduction of work from Monday to the actual production Monday to Friday, and weekends are preparatory works. That creates flexibility with 30,000 tons per day, which creates additional volume flexibility, and we, as a board, underscored that as of today, in the past, we have the black days. In other words, Monday, Friday was sufficient to fulfill the demand of our clients.
So, note at our slide presented here and our own presentation, our reserves stand at one day of production. So, we are building flexibility in order to ensure in case of increase, we add Saturdays. If there is a decline, we can cut by one black day.
So we have, as I said, we have learned our lessons, and we are not boasting, but you are assessing this based on the results. If the fluctuations are substantial, then our flexibility is limited to the coverage of the fixed costs. And we are aiming at the key areas that we are producing on.
Further questions?
Rafał Zasuń, Wysokie Napięcie Magazine. So I have five questions. Let me ask them one by one. First one, Kozienice, the power market, a comprehensive answer if I could get. Will you submit that to auctions? What is the financing reality for building additional unit there? And what about the contractor for that production?
We have waited for that question. This is an excellent question. So, ladies and gentlemen, looking at the procedure in progress now on building of these gas sources in Kozienice, this is progressing in line with the plan.
We have yet to receive a binding offer at the time when this was set, so we've moved into negotiation with a single supplier or contractor, and we are in negotiations. We have not changed in our determination to move in the power market, and we have contracts with the banks in terms of obtaining certain binding offers, not yet contracts, so before the power market comes online, we will have all the pieces of the puzzle to be able to launch at the expected time. Do you really want to rush into this?
That's another question. Yes, this is a sub-question, of course. Let me put it that way. That project has been in operation for the past three years, so if we were to be rushing, that's really not it. It's rather a marathon run, and we are at the final stages of that marathon run.
Another question then on the repurchase of in-generation. You have the good results based on that. What is the load factor when that becomes not sufficient? You will no longer be able to keep the margins at positive level. The load factor continues to fall. Hence, at what? Is it 1500 hours or whatever else? Will that no longer work?
Let me answer like this. In fact, the disproportion between sold energy and that produced one is decreasing, the disparity. The difference we fill in with the repurchase of electricity from the spot market and the balancing market. I would put it like this. It's not so much a load factor, which is at stake, but we want to accomplish hedging activity and not speculative activity. It's not about the spec. We can repurchase only as much energy, as much we have saved by production or safeguarded.
So if we produce, we purchase the CO2, and we have safeguarded fuels. There may be a situation when we won't be able to fill in this sales space. And this is the major problem. To be able to sell electricity, so properly speaking, to have the chart for the units, the time charts, and then we can decide whether we generate it by itself or buy it from the market if it's profitable. Now we face a major problem.
The entire coal-operated energy sector, we have negative spreads on coal. It's difficult to sell electricity, and only this opens up an opportunity for us to either generate it or to repurchase it. Of course, keeping the hedging properly and not asset-based trading, that's not the point. Yes, but there is a certain level at which the load factor where costs are not covered.
Yes, they are not, but the needs of the capacity market for the capacity market in other streams of revenue on the generation side. So the balance, there's balancing the capacity market and how to use properly or to manage properly materials, other such waste. There will be no capacity market in a while in three years' time. Well, I believe very much, I'm fully convinced that the capacity market for the year 2026-2028 will be in place, and we count on that fact that the configuration and the way how the derogation mechanism will be such that it will allow us to take part in this marketplace.
But also, and I've mentioned that many a time, I cannot imagine that after that period, after 2028, there will be no scheme that would provide a reserve or provision in the system to be built by conventional coal-operated sources.
I will agree that these sources will be marginal power generated ones providing this power reserve, but it will be operating after a few years after that market starts. Does it cover the fixed costs in full? Such a market, capacity market, does not cover them. It's not its role. This capacity market is to finance a part of the business operation. As I said, we have several financial streams. The main one is electricity market, which with current conditions does not cover fixed costs.
All we do and what we are going to struggle with is that we want to cover the variable costs and certain margin to be generated by trading, repurchasing and two other important factors are the capacity markets where we are until the end of the next year and the market of balancing services where we can. We've been taking since 14th June this year.
Storage will be the warehouses' storage capacity in taking part in merchant storage and whether the auctions have been already announced for the construction.
No, we haven't announced. There was no RFP. There will be different storage. There will be those that will be for the capacity market and those that will be not submitted. So it's not during this auction, not during this year's auction. And the last about the tariffs. There is an obligation by the law, the draft law adopted by the government that you apply for change tariff by 30th April next year. And the question is, how do you assess such a legislative activity? You have extended tariffs so that you can have stable conditions to operate. As you rightly observed, it's a draft of a new regulation, draft of a parliamentary act which is undergoing legislative procedure.
The assumptions are, the guidelines are that companies will have to apply next year for corrected tariff or adjusted tariffs. I am deeply concerned, and that's how we made an agreement five or six months ago with the president of URE that we have a tariff for 18 months. Everyone knows how it was designed, how we approach the energy provision. But does not draft, but the president, the CEO of URE knows of Energy Regulatory Office, URE. We'll see the final draft, and then we can say something. We don't need to worry in advance. Mr. Sawicki has a question. I can see. Thank you very much. In line, I will stay in line with my colleague. Calculating very fast the value of the repurchase of energy, 46% on the early position.
What is the, if you count for the first three quarters, what's your forecast for the next year? Will you continue with such a high repurchase? Will we wind up the result of generation? While in the forecast, you can see that you will be still forced to an even bigger effort to switch off the cogeneration unit. And I have to ask about the freezing of energy prices. I know that entities such as local authorities or SMEs will have those prices at the level of PLN 690. I wonder whether this level in the portfolio, do you have companies that still use this price or the market is stable enough that the price is below PLN 690 if we talk about these entities such as SMEs and local authorities, local governments?
Well, talking about repurchase, it will operate next year as well. But the repurchase are two issues. One, that we are sort of detached. And second are the price differences. Even if we have the repurchase next year, we won't earn as much on price differences. That's certain. It was a bonus for the market. So we've gone down from very high energy prices. Now, as you can see, they've been stabilized. So you can count on the margin on this kind of activity will be much lower than during this year.
Now, looking at your second question, there are clients who take advantage of this suspension. Some have treated this to themselves with advance of two years. At that time, the price was below PLN 620. Today, for some considerable time, the price for the clients is much lower at about PLN 510, let's be precise, depending on the market segment. So the market today is substantially below that protective barrier.
Those that have contracted two years ago, 18 months ago, at that time, we had much higher prices than the PLN 693.
Further questions.
Hello, Irek Chojnacki. Nowy Przemysł website. On the distribution market, what is the idea to implement the instruction for the network? In other words, to ask regulator to adopt the option that after 30 days of rights to connection, if there is no connection, the operator has the right to review the conditions, which market reads as really cutting the window for connection to 30 days, basically.
The distribution market is ever more dynamic. It's not the time when there was an electrical energy coming to end users from a number of coal-fired sources. Today, connections are. We have a lot more working, growing power of the RES sources, and that allows us to better improve the management of that process.
If the queue is longer and the clients will not have the conditions, because when the conditions are issued, they were based on specific conditions of the time, so when we issue the connection conditions until signing of a connection agreement, they may respond because the network situation may change over that time.
Let me add to what Marek has said and say that it seems that one important additional element of why we submitted this proposal, it doesn't have to be 30 days. The market has acted as a reserve power without signing, but that blocked others who otherwise would have approached us and signed actual connection contracts with us, so oftentimes, there weren't contracts following many of these requests.
So if we have signatures and we see that those investments and not just blocking for capacity in the network, we don't want to have created a third market, trading in the terms and conditions for connection.
Let me ask another question. Now, my question is for the distribution segment. One, a general question of what is the company's intent? How much did you apply for in terms of monies from the national project for granting? And tell us over how many years that is, for one year or for a longer period of time. And also, I'd like you to start showing us a graph starting from next presentation of how RAB develops.
That's an important part of the market, and we want to start observing that. To respond to your second question, we can add that graph.
We will do, because we are showing how much our distribution results increase by adding the WACC change. We have demonstrated this on the first question. Some of our entities are still submitting applications for grants, so we are summing this up. One thing I can say now is that program is at EUR 16 billion, up to 2036. That's the spent period. And our application goes into billions of EUR of grant funding. Ultimately, these monies will be distributed based on actual needs and PSE and key operators, investment development plans.
Could you make that more precise? If you're saying billions, then there is a major difference between two as opposed to three billion. If we divide the EUR 16 billion by five main players, 1/5 of the 16, would that be a good estimate of what you should or you aspire to acquire?
We'd like to have our piece of the cake, of the pie. The market needs to develop on the Polish power grid, but also all the main players, generators. So this should be allocated according to the needs. We've started with a major scale application, and these amounts are substantial, but I cannot tell you how much we would be satisfied with if this is a fair distribution, and the regulator, I'm sure, is reviewing these plans, plans, and the companies are looking at this, and the regulator is also double-checking that, then I can hope for fair distribution of these grant funds.
Mr. Sawicki, three very brief questions. Hedging for power. Polenergia, people have said that they've contracted for next year. My question is, can you share with us the level of contracting for next year?
Also, the price of energy under the eco offering of yours, what is the rate that you're offering under this new service? Also, for the households, particularly.
Based on the guaranteed price for daily energy use. In your list of projects, RES projects, 130 MW in Połaniec. KPI also mentions the same project, gas fired. Is that the same project, or will we have some more detail about this project that has not been? This gas project has not been announced earlier, but seems to be going ahead in Połaniec.
Let me start with hedging. From our perspective, the answer is very straightforward. The entire position is hedged. We are using various hedging methods depending on what we are hedging. Looking at the sales position, we hedge the majority of contracts immediately on the back-to-back basis to the extent possible. Otherwise, we also hedge by tracking the market basis.
So that's the generation side. The method of hedging is driven by the contracting form. The level of hedge of generation by products, I will not share. Apologies for that. Looking at the topic of the eco offer, and you're asking specifically for households, retail households. I cannot give you the price right off. I will share that with the market. We are currently preparing the offering of green offer for the households for the coming years, longer term, because we are convinced that we should be promoting that in the market.
And you've also asked about Połaniec and this energy power storage facility, gas-fired unit at Połaniec. Yes. We are looking at various gas-fired projects, not just Połaniec. This is not any specific decision as yet. That's not been adopted.
However, after discussions and consultations with PSE, Polish Power Grid, we perceive the need for building out the gas-fired peakers, in other words, those sources that are used very limited timeframe, but will be a flexible reserve for us. We are very much for undertaking this topic. We're thinking of building such units in Połaniec and Kozienice and third other location. Much depends on the conditions of availability of capacity under PSE.
Whether units of 130 MW in Połaniec, I cannot respond to that question. For final questions, we will allow Mr. Chojnacki to ask that question.
Thank you. I forgot to ask about an important matter. What is your current plan in terms of timetabling of retiring Kozienice units, 200 MW units? How consistent are you in adopting that plan? This is part and very important part of our strategy.
So if we will be presenting it to you, this has to be done in a broader context. And I won't give you a discussion of dates or times specifically now, but our overall strategy and our approach to the generation mix, this has been very worked out in great detail. The most probable scenario includes development of other sources, gas-fired and res. So, this is part and parcel of our overall strategy. So when we discuss strategy, we will discuss that in great detail. Thank you very much for your questions and responses as well and inviting you for next year when we summarize 2024 in its.