The Government of the Russian Federation approved additional criteria for territorial grid organizations to improve the reliability of power supply

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a resolution produced by the Ministry of Energy on establishing additional criteria for territorial grid organizations (TGOs), which will help improve the quality of electricity supply to consumers. The corresponding document is posted on the official portal of legal information.

At the end of last year, Vladimir Putin instructed the Ministry of Energy to step up work on consolidating TGOs. The head of state stressed that it is necessary to increase the responsibility of such companies for ensuring the reliability of energy supply to consumers, including by revising the criteria for classifying network owners as TGOs.

“The changes are also aimed at increasing the level of readiness of regional headquarters and grid organizations to prevent and eliminate the consequences of natural and man-made accidents, the trouble-free passage of the heating season, the elimination of the consequences of floods and fires, as well as to increase the reliability of electric power systems,” Nikolay Shulginov commented.

The adopted resolution clarifies the criteria for classifying power grid owners as TGOs. Such parameters as the length of networks and the transformer capacity of equipment have been increased. The application of the new criteria will gradually deprive inefficient TGOs of this status.

Of the 1,683 TGOs registered in Russia today, 54% do not have investment development programs. Such TSOs are insufficiently equipped with an emergency reserve, they have an increased level of equipment wear, they allocate no more than 12% of financial resources to capital investments, and in fact, they pursue a policy of short-term planning and inefficient operation of the distribution grid complex.

At the same time, they, along with other TGOs that have development investment programs, are subject to tariff regulation and “take away” part of the financial resources. Thus, these organizations create an unreasonable tariff burden for all groups of electricity consumers.

In addition, there is a suboptimal distribution of resources associated with the operation, maintenance and development of power grids. Often there is a duplication of running costs for the operation of the power grid infrastructure (for example, for the employment costs of maintenance personnel and dispatching) and investment costs (for the construction of new substations).