The authorities are set to review the results of the power industry's reform in light of the problems exposed by the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant. Addressing a meeting of top specialists in high technology, Vladimir Putin demanded that measures be taken to ensure a new level of safety in the energy sector. Earlier, government officials explained that the main problems in the sector stemmed from the "separation of the participants in a single technological process".
As Vladimir Putin told a meeting of the Council of Chief and General Designers yesterday at the Lenin All-Russia Electrical Engineering Institute, "We will have to make decisions early on to ensure a fundamentally new level of safety and reliability in our energy facilities."
Above all, he said, modern standards and safety norms should be put in place at all the technological stages, from the design of equipment to its operation and maintenance. He pointed out that the investigation into the Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Station accident had revealed that the tragedy in fact had several causes. "We're talking about non-compliance with the prescribed technological procedure, the quality of the equipment and the state of the regulatory framework," Mr. Putin said.
By all appearances, conclusions and decisions will come along very soon. Government officials presented their own ideas ahead of the meeting. As they see it, the main problems today arise "from the separation of participants in a single technological process of generation, transmission and consumption of electricity and the emergence of many independent players in the market." One of the officials explained to Prime TASS that this often results in a "conflict of interests, especially between the monopoly and the competitive sectors of the market, a lag in the adaptation of the technological regulations behind the market development, and vaguely defined areas of responsibility for compliance with safety rules among the market's players." Considering this, government members believe that if these tasks are to be solved, "effective state regulation and firm obligations of emerging business entities in the market" are vital.
In effect, they called into question the results of not only the power industry's reform, but also the division of RAO UES Russia into companies according to type of activity. Yet, it's still not clear exactly what the authorities will come up with to solve the problems and whether or not a monopoly will be revived in some form or another. And there is no consensus among experts.
"Even at the early stages of reform, specialists pointed out that the liberal model being imposed was at odds with the technological structure of the power industry, and that it would undermine safety and make competitive prices completely impossible," said Yuri Saakyan, General Director of the Institute of Natural Monopolies Studies. "The reform actually created conditions for the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant accident: the segregation of "repairs" as non-core activities, violation of the sector's system of centralised management, investment planning, etc." Either way, it would be next to impossible to restore the former structure of RAO UES, although the creation of a new government holding would have a favourable impact on technological stability and cost-cutting in the sector." The main thing is to keep it from becoming just another commercial project to make super-profits, and it should be the result of conscious, thoughtful actions by the state in order to ensure a balanced development of infrastructure," Mr. Saakyan explained. "We should finally admit that the electricity market that's been created is inefficient."
Andrei Chernyavsky from the consulting company 2K Audit-Delovye Konsultatsii thinks the government is unlikely to admit that the reform of RAO UES has been a failure, and it would be incredibly problematic to try and reverse the reform. Likewise, the emergence of a single energy company similar to the disbanded RAO UES is a long shot. "Yet, the way the issue is approached implies global state control over the sector," the analyst pointed out. "For this purpose, you might see the creation of a company that will tightly control all the operations in the market: the volume of generation, distribution, sales and purchases. The company might become an intermediary between generating and distribution facilities, for example, thereby controlling all the energy purchase transactions, and in turn, the volume of generation. The sector's best option at this point would be to develop technical supervision services."
Sergey Kulikov