Energy in Russia

NOTE: Some of the following information is copied from JSC RAO “EES” of Russia as a reference source with no commercial value.

  

The high demand on electric energy is still covered by RAO EES (All-Russian Energy System Company) in regions where electric lines installed. However there are still some regions where the growth of the energy consumption exceeds any forecasts. In some regions of Tumen city the growth of energy consumption exceeds 20% per year. RAO EES is not able to follow this tempo.

The total number of accidents in electric stations of RAO EES, is going down. However the scale of the accidents is growing. The big accident was registered in Moscow in 2006. Fan disconnection of electric lines was made in Nizhevartovsk, Sochi.

The demand of electric energy passes ahead of the production in almost all regions of Russia. The limitations in Moscow reflect the general picture in the whole Russia.

The growth of energy consumption is obvious. The statistics shows that the demand is more than the production. All it says about necessity of building new energy sources.

The balance between industrial and non-commercial objects is being changed.

Here one can see how the structure of consumption in Moscow had been changed. In 1990 it’s a typical industrial city. More than 55% of consumption is the part of industrial sector. Now it’s only 34%, taking into the account that the consumption increased. Here another problem – the increase of non-industrial consumption. The non-commercial consumer is uncontrollable and unpredictable. He will not follow the instruction not to switch on the device after 9 PM….

Moscow is great office area center where the business activity is the highest in Russia. However this number per capita still less than in the West.

 

These numbers are even less in the other Russian cities. Thus there is great reserve of power supply and consumption increase along the non-industrial sector and population.

Diagram for population is even more serious:

Consequence of such disbalancement is as follows:
Blue line – the installed power in Moscow region, red line – change of load maximum at temperature below -26C degrees (below zero). The difference between day and week consumption is 20%. It means that if the cold will take even a week, the energy consumption will increase a lot. If this number will be determined by non-industrial consumers, then RAO EES will not be able to meet the needs of this sector. Recently RAO EES is planning to disconnect several regions during such peak consumption.
 
Today RAO EES doesn’t build any new power sources. The consumers build them by themselves. For instance oil and gas companies make their own energy stations. Sahalin Gas Plant is building 150 MWatt electric station (all Sahalin consumption is 400 MWatts). These stations will not connect themselves into RAO EES united system. This tendency is growing.

According to the forecast of RAO EES, the alternative power sources will prevail over the traditional in the near future.