Impact on society and employees

Our activities and ensuring the continuity of electricity supply determine the wellbeing of Poles.

It is PSE’s particular concern to ensure the security of employees and contractors’ personnel providing services to our company. To make this possible, we incessantly take care of the development and security of our technical infrastructure.

We are a modern organisation fostering an innovative working environment. We care about the development of internal competences of our employees. We want to constantly strengthen the unique knowledge base in the organisation and the expertise of the PSE staff responsible for maintaining a secure and stable power system.

Impact on society and employees

PSE’s activities in the context of the transmission tariff and electricity bills

Electricity transmission from power plants to consumers is possible over an extensive transmission infrastructure. Responsibility for infrastructure on the part of PSE involves the need to carry out maintenance, inspection and repair work, and perform necessary, economically justified upgrades and expansions. This is aimed to address changes arising e.g. from an increase in demand and the energy consumption structure in the country, as well as the change of the structure and location of generating sources.

Maintaining the required quality parameters of electricity supplied and ensuring PPS operation security is associated with the need to purchase ancillary services provided by electricity generators.

Financing of expenses related to the transmission business, i.e. operating costs and capital expenditure, is based on the rules set forth in the applicable legal provisions, and expenses are covered by income from transmission services based on the application of the company’s Tariff approved by the President of ERO .

The tariff is a set of prices and at charge rates, and conditions for their use developed each year on the basis of planned, reasonable costs of business, as well as return on capital employed in transmission activities, intended for the financing of investment projects. The costs providing a basis for the calculation of charge rates for transmission services are subject to assessment by the President of ERO who approves the Tariff in an administrative procedure.

In 2019, PSE SA Tariff contained tariff charge rates:

calculated by the TSO on the basis of the cost of PSE’s transmission activities and return on capital,
set by the President of ERO, not related directly to PSE’s activities – RES charge connected with ensuring the availability in the PPS of electricity from renewable sources. In 2019, the RES charge rate was 0 PLN/MWh,
resulting from the Act on the promotion of electricity from high-efficiency cogeneration (in force since 25 January 2019) not related directly to PSE’s activities – transitional fee related to the PPS access service.

All revenue collected by PSE in respect of the RES charge, cogeneration charge and the transitional fee is transferred to the Settlement Body, a company responsible for its redistribution to generators.

Structure of charges in PSE’s tariff

According to the electricity market operation model in Poland, PSE settles accounts for transmission services with consumers physically connected to the transmission network within the territory of Poland, i.e.:

distribution system operators ( DSO ), for whom the costs of acquisition of services from PSE represent justified costs of business and are taken into account in calculating their tariffs for electricity distribution services,
final consumers.

The consumers identified above – physically connected to the PSE network – are thus responsible for all costs taken into account in calculating the transmission charge rates.

Generators do not pay transmission charges in respect of feeding electric energy into the network. They only pay the quality charge – for the quantity of electricity consumed by final consumers connected to their networks, facilities and equipment, to whom they sell electricity.

Traders do not make any tariff payments to PSE, except the market charge, which is applied only to electricity imported into Poland from Ukraine.

In the case of distribution-connected consumers (DSO network), including households, the cost of electricity supply, in addition to costs related to DSOs’ activities also includes PSE’s operating costs, i.e. those related to the purchase of transmission services from the TSO by DSOs.

PSE costs in our electricity bill

Fig. PSE costs in our electricity bill.

The average net rate of the charge for transmission services provided by PSE in 2019 (without the rates for support charges, i.e. without the transitional fee, the cogeneration charge and the RES charge, which amounted to PLN 0/MWh in 2019) represented only approx. 5.3% of the average gross rate for households. The net rate of support charges (transitional fee, cogeneration charge and RES charge) represented 0.5% of the average gross rate for households.

The bill amount for households is influenced mainly by:

the electricity price,
distribution service costs,
value added tax.