RusHydro announces plans for Far East
MOSCOW. Nov 21 (Interfax) - Russian hydro power company RusHydro will replace inefficient RAO Energy Systems Vostok (ES Vostok) power stations with its own hydro power stations, establish direct contracts with consumers in the Far East and attract investors for new construction, RusHydro said in a press release.
RusHydro obtained the controlling stake (69.316%) in the Far Eastern energy holding company two weeks ago through an additional share issue (the government contributed 52.68%) and had not yet announced its plans for the region.
"The RusHydro strategy to develop Far Eastern energy provision will include replacement of economically inefficient capacity by synchronizing management of hydro power and combined heat and power plants in the Far Eastern Federal District, direct contracts with consumers for existing capacity and fore potential capacity, realizing the potential for cross-border export of electricity and implementation of investment projects applying public-private partnerships and project funding," the RusHydro release says.
RusHydro also plans to upgrade ES Vostok capacity and has already found a foreign partner for this. RusHydro on November 18 signed an agreement with Alstom Grid. Alstom Grid will participate in the reconstruction of heat and power plants as RusHydro specializes in hydro power plants.
It was reported earlier that RusHydro also plans to optimize ES Vostok finances. The EBRD said it was ready to allocate 8 billion rubles to RusHydro to restructure the Far Eastern holding company's debt (the total amount required according to the bank is 20 billion rubles). A RAO ES Vostok consolidated report to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) shows that short-term liabilities at the start of 2011 totaled 45.46 billion, including 23.54 billion rubles on loans. Long-term debt totaled 30.87 billion rubles.
A direct strategy for ES Vostok is still being developed, RusHydro told Interfax. The document will be approved at the beginning of 2012.
The power stations within the ES Vostok holding company have capacity of 8,785 megawatts. The companies produced 27.56 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and 30.21 million gigacalories of thermal energy in 2010.
RusHydro has hydro power plants in the Far East (Bureyskaya, Zeyskaya and Kolymskaya) and geothermal plants (Mutnovskaya, Verkhnee-Mutnovskaya and Pauzhetskaya) with total capacity of almost 4.5 gigawatts. It is building new hydro power plants - Ust-Srednekanskaya and Nizhnee-Bureyskaya with capacity of 570 megawatts and 320 megawatts, respectively. RusHydro capacity in the Far East could also expand through other assets, such as Svetlinskaya HPP, which belongs to Alrosa.
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