Economic growth and a consequent increase in the electricity demand causes a jump rise in the number of requirements for the develompment of the distribution grid. Last year, CEZ Distribuce itself connected more than 20 thousand new consumers, reinforced hundreds of present lines. Thus, investments in the distribution network are rising enormously, while they were 4.2bn CZK in 2005, last year already 6.6bn CZK, and the amount next year will be higher than 10bn CZK.

„The most important are new connections to industrial zones, for example, in North-Moravian industrial zones Nosovice and Mosnov the amount invested was 682m CZK.  Currently, we register applications for electric connections representing total supply of 2,500 MW, which is, for comparison, an output of 2.5 units of Temelin Nuclear Power Plant. These figures surprise our colleagues in other European power companies“, said Jiri Kudrnac, director of CEZ distribution division. 

In addition to applications for connection of consumers, CEZ Distribuce responds to 3,609 application forms for connections of producers with an output of 11.9 GW.  5 years ago, there were by half less filed applications than today. These figures, however, cannot be expected to be achieved especially in case of new sources, as 95 % of them are represented by sources able to supply a tenth of the installed capacity at the most. They often include projects at an early stage of preparations which very probably will not be realized. Despite that, they must be seriously dealt with.

Though, somewhere the reinforcement of power network is accompanied by difficulties. The biggest difficulties are connected to property rights relating to construction of necessary new lines. Only planning, construction and negotiations with surveyor´s offices often take less time than arranging agreements with landholders. For instance, the project to reinforce lines leading to Sluknovsky vybezek has not been completed due to a failure to find an agreement of all parties involved.

There are several places, where the present network cannot meet requirements of all applicants for connections to electric supplies on the map of the Czech Republic (Jablonec, Ostrava, Mlada Boleslav). Besides that, there are areas (Krusne Hory), where is not a sufficient network capacity to connect new sources, primarily wind power stations.

„The reason is definitely not our tartiness. First, the increase in the number of applications has really been staggering recently, and we also cope with the same problems as developers of every other line construction. Our difficulties are very similar to the scrumble related to motorways known through the media. Even we must deal with determination of routing and settlement of property rights“, explains Josef Holub, managing director of CEZ Distribuce. Josef Holub.

At the same time, it is necessary to coordinate our actions with the trasmission system operator CEPS, which is dealing with idendical problems, and whose network CEZ is linked to. Recently the cooperation with representatives of regional authorities has been improving since they have learned that extension of the electricity distribution network is important for the development of their regions. The most difficulties occur in areas, where transmission lines providing better supplies to certain regions cross another region whose representatives take no interest in the construction. „We call that cross-country lines“, adds Holub.

Pursuant to law, energy companies can build even on someone else´s land, but the relationships with them must be set up  under the right of user based on contract. Some landholders, however, have absolutely unrealistic requirements and their fulfilment would have negative impact on regulated electricity distribution prices, which are directly connected to costs. 

CEZ Distribuce operates power distribution network in most regions in the CR (except Prague, south Bohemia and south Moravia). For this purpose, it has over 2 million support points, 49,963 transformers, 153,778 km of lines and 3,495,103 supply points. It is a hundred-percent subsidiary of CEZ, whose influence is limited by a separation of management (unbundling) in accordance with the EU requirements. CEZ only performs the proprietary administration, but does not participate in the company management at all.