End users are guaranteed to have electricity this winter, even under the most pessimistic scenarios, Lyubomir Velkov, chief executive director of National Electric Company (NEC) told journalists on October 14.

He refused to make a forecast of Bulgaria's internal use of electricity for the 2007-2008 winter season, mediapool.bg said.

All thermo-electric power plants had secured contract for the necessary amounts of fuel, Velkov said.

The power plants would not import electricity for end user usage. Import is only possible under the so-called free quota. Without a contract with NEC, business users could end up without electricity or might have to look for other alternative suppliers, Velkov said.

Over 2006, NEC exported 7.7  billion KWh electricity, while for 2007 over the first nine months about 3 billion KWh had already been exported.

Velkov said that electricity is sold in Bulgaria's internal market at a marginal profit of 0.00116 lev KWh. The demand on external markets was sufficiently large to make export no problem at all, he said.