Andrey Ryumin, Director General of PJSC Rosseti, spoke about the 2021/2022 autumn-winter period (AWP) outcomes and topical issues of the electric power industry functioning at the All-Russian Meeting. Nikolay Shulginov, Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, chaired the event in Moscow.

It was noted that in the vast majority of regions where the Rosseti Group operates, the reliable operation of the power grid was ensured during the completed AWP, even against the background of a sharp increase in the number of dangerous weather phenomena, which amounted to 30% compared to the 2020/2021 AWP. It was negative natural factors that caused most of the technological failures.

An important stage in preparing for winter was the repair and maintenance campaign with a total funding of RUB 71.5 billion. The maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) program exceeded the plan by 12% in physical terms for the main items, including the repair of almost 135,000 km of power transmission lines and 41,600 transformer substations.

"Our autumn-winter period outcomes are quite satisfactory. However, special attention should be paid to the situation in the regions where technological failures were recorded due to difficult weather conditions and depreciation of facilities, which arose due to a long-term shortage of renovation funds. We need to find a systematic solution to this issue. The Rosseti Group has developed 18 targeted programs to improve reliability, nine of which have already been approved by the Russian Ministry of Energy. We hope that funding sources for the events will be identified in the months to come," noted Andrey Ryumin.

The work of third-party territorial grid organizations (TGOs) also became one of the discussion topics. For such companies, the cost of servicing a piece of equipment is in most cases significantly higher than that of the Rosseti Group. The way out of this situation may be the unification of approaches to regulation, the introduction of a reference principle for the formation of operating costs, and the approval of investment programs of large TGOs at the federal level.

During the meeting, other topical issues of the power grid complex functioning were discussed, in particular, those related to preferential technological connection. It was noted that now the cost of such work in the investment programs of energy companies can reach 60% or more, and the connected capacity can be used by consumers only by 12%. Thus, there is a lack of funds for the necessary grid modernization and development projects.