November 13 (SeeNews) - Moldova's electricity consumption in the first nine months of this year rose by 5.1% on the year to 2.31 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), the country's energy regulator, ANRE, said on Tuesday.
Electricity production fell by 11.8% to 592.5 million kWh, ANRE said in a statement.
Moldova's three power plants covered 21.7% of the country's electricity consumption through September. Remaining demand was met through electricity imports from Ukraine that rose by 8.2% on the year to 2.14 billion kWh.
"The fall in domestic power output was due to warm weather in the beginning of the year which led to lower demand for heating power," ANRE said.
ANRE added that Moldova's five power distributors bought 2.74 million kWh of electricity in the first nine months of 2007, up by 3.5% on the year.
Power distribution companies cut their losses by 0.61 percentage points to 13.77% of all electricity supplied in the period.
Spanish utility Union Fenosa owns three of Moldova's power distributors. The other two are state-owned.