Short-Term Energy Policies Discussed in Panel Session

The Energy Research Centre (ERC) of the Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU), organized a panel session entitled "Short Term Energy Investment Policies for N. Cyprus" on 28th of January in the conference hall of the Cyprus Turkish Medical Association. Guest speakers were Mr Ahmet Hüdaoğlu, Chairman of the Executive Board of Cyprus Turkish Electricity Board, KIB-TEK, Mehmet Salih Gürkan, Chief Engineer of the Power Plants and Martyn Osborn, Project Manager of the Resource Efficiency Achievement Project. Asst. Prof. Dr. Ugur Atikol, Director of ERC, chaired the panel session. Prof. Dr. Halil Guven, Rector of EMU, made the opening speech where he expressed the need of having control over the demand of energy as well as its supply. 

Mr Hüdaoğlu said that the present problems arise from a lack of understanding of the technical problems by politicians. He said "due to this lack of understanding, there is a shortage of proper planning of energy issues." Mr. Gürkan pointed out that that there is a need of a new load distribution centre in order to be able to control the power contributions of each power plant to the main system. He also said that in the near future maximum peak demand will be determined by the summer peak demand due to the rise in air conditioning load.

Mr. Osborne emphasized the need of avoiding electricity cuts as manufacturers experience a lot of problems, which leads to loss of time and money for them. He said that the demand must be reduced to be in balance with the supply. He added that according to his experience the electric tariffs are lower than they should be.