Moscow, 27 April 2007. A ceremony was held in Moscow today to kick off the construction of a new power unit at the CHPP-26 of OAO "Mosenergo". The ceremony was attended by Anatoly Chubais, Chairman of the Management Board of RAO "UES of Russia"; Moscow City Mayor Yuri Luzhkov; and Anatoly Kopsov, Director General of OAO "Mosenergo".

The new power unit of the CHPP-26 will be one of the most advanced, efficient and environment-friendly power units in Russia and Europe. It will use a fourth-generation combined-cycle technology. This technology will help significantly improve the plant's performance, as the new power unit will have an efficiency of 59%. This will save up to 20-25% of fuel and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a third compared to conventional steam power generators.

The new combined-cycle unit of the CHPP-26 will have the largest capacity in Moscow. Its aggregate installed generation capacity is 420 MW of electricity and 265 Gcal/h of heat.

It is the first time in Russia's electric power sector that a new combined-cycle generation unit will be constructed on a turnkey basis by an EPC-contractor selected through a tender—Alstom, a global leader in power engineering. The power unit is expected to be put into operation in Q2 2009.

The project is implemented under the "Investment Programme of RAO "UES of Russia" until 2011 and the "Programme for the Development and Modernization" developed by Mosenergo specialists jointly with the Russian Academy of Sciences. Within the framework of this programme, construction of new combined-cycle units is already underway at the CHPP-22 and CHPP-27. In 2007-2011, OAO "Mosenergo" plans to bring 4,497.5 MW of generation capacity on line.