From the 2026 budget audit
35.8 milliárd Ft paid to generators for reserve capacity — without a tender.
Flat budget payments to designated generators for keeping reserve capacity available — replacing a competitive market with an administratively set sum paid to pre-selected recipients.
Roughly 8,970 Ft per taxpayer per year — 35,800 millió Ft in capacity payments to designated generators, phased out over 5 years as the function moves to competitive market procurement.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: generators keeping reserve capacity available and receiving a state payment for it. The unseen: the competitive tender that would reveal what reserve capacity actually costs — and the saving if it costs less than the administratively set sum — foregone because the allocation is discretionary rather than market-priced.
Objection
"Reserve capacity has to be paid for — generators won't keep plants ready without compensation."
Answer
Agreed — reserve capacity has a real cost and a real function. The question is how to pay for it. A competitive ancillary-services market, where the transmission operator buys reserve from whichever generators offer it most cheaply, reveals the real cost and ensures the sum paid is the minimum required. A flat budget transfer to designated generators at an administratively set price does neither.
Share if you think reserve power capacity should be procured at a competitive price, not set by an official's desk.
The analyst's verdict
Compensation for electricity generation as a system-security service
Rationale
This line compensates electricity generators for keeping capacity available as a system-security (reserve) service. There is a genuine technical function underneath it: a power system needs reserve capacity it can call on, and that reserve has a real cost. But financing it as a budget transfer is the wrong mechanism. In a properly designed market, system-security services are procured through a capacity or ancillary-services market in which the transmission system operator buys reserve from whichever generators offer it most cheaply, and the cost is recovered from electricity users through the network tariff — the people who consume the reliability pay for it, and the competitive procurement reveals what the reserve actually costs. A flat budget transfer instead pays an administratively set sum to designated generators, with no tender to discipline the price and no signal of whether the reserve is worth what it costs. The phase-out migrates the function to a market-procured, tariff-funded ancillary-services arrangement. It is gradual because existing capacity-availability agreements run for fixed terms that must be honoured.
Transition mechanism
Linear over 5 years, tracking the run-off of existing capacity agreements. Net saving rises from 7,160.0 millió Ft in year 1 to the full 35,800.0 millió Ft in year 5, by which point reserve capacity is procured competitively and recovered through the network tariff.
Affected groups
Generators currently holding system-security contracts (protected through agreement run-off); electricity users, who pay for reserve capacity through a transparent tariff rather than through general tax.
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