Along with the cold weather, interruptions in heat supply came to Russia
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During the New Year holidays, amid severe frosts, residents of a number of Russian regions faced power outages. The most widespread heat outages were in the Moscow region, where several thousand consumers were left without electricity, hot water and heat. In Klimovsk, in particular, 174 apartment buildings were left without heating. The exact number of victims and the causes of the incident are being established. The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, told Kommersant that the accident in Klimovsk occurred due to the fault of the owners of the boiler house, who knew about the problem, but did not contact the authorities. Mr. Vorobyov also spoke about the progress of restoration work. Meanwhile, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered to check all the facts of restrictions on heat and electricity supply in the Moscow region.
During the New Year holidays, complaints about power outages, heating and hot water were received from different regions: residents shared problems on social networks and sent appeals to the authorities.
The outages largely affected the Moscow region.
Temperatures in the Moscow region have recently been noticeably below the climate norm. Thus, on the night of January 3–4, the frost in Tushino intensified to –27.7°C. Representative of the Phobos center Evgeny Tishkovets noted that the last time such frosts were observed here was 42 years ago. On the same day in the Moscow region, 30-degree frosts were recorded at weather stations in Volokolamsk (–30.2°C), Shakhovskaya (–30.5°C), Pushkino (–30.6°C), Solnechnogorsk (–30 .8 °C), Dmitrov (–31.3°C) and Klin (–32°C). Amid a number of accidents, residents complained about the inaction of the authorities. Residents of Lobnya, for example, clarified that management companies accept complaints, but people “sit for several days without heat.” Residents of Lyubertsy and Ramenskoye, according to them, “managed to change the situation only after calling “112” (the call center for emergency operational services.— “Kommersant”)”, and the authorities did not respond to the problems. In Khimki, Lytkarino, Solnechnogorsk, Balashikha, Voskresensk, Chekhov and Krasnogorsk, residents of several streets remained without light and heat during the New Year holidays.
The most widespread interruptions in heat supply occurred precisely on January 4 in Klimovsk (part of Podolsk) due to an accident in a private boiler house located on the territory of the Klimovsky specialized cartridge plant and providing heat to residents of one of the microdistricts: 174 apartment buildings, as well as medical and educational and preschool institutions. The mayor of Podolsk, Grigory Artamonov, explained that since the accident occurred at a sensitive facility, the elimination of its consequences was delayed. A local emergency regime was introduced in the city, and based on the results of the pre-investigation check, a criminal case was opened under Part 1 of Art. 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (provision of services that do not meet safety requirements). The premises of the organization servicing the boiler room are searched, technical documentation is confiscated, and management is interrogated.
“The boiler house in Klimovsk is run by private owners – the owners are abroad and did not want to get in touch with us,” Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the Moscow region, explained to Kommersant. “Therefore, we lost a lot of time before we found out about the problem, it was simply hidden . Because of this, what happened is of such a scale, especially in conditions of abnormal frosts, when communications freeze very quickly.” Mr. Vorobyov noted that out of 174 houses in Klimovsk, heat was again supplied to 69: “Due to various problems associated, for example, with airing, warm radiators are not yet in each of these apartments. Therefore, teams have to work without the right to take a break. All houses should be connected this night and tomorrow morning. To avoid further breakthroughs, we raise the temperature gradually and change radiators somewhere.”
The governor did not comment in detail on the situation in other cities near Moscow, but noted that “such emergency situations reveal chronic problems,” so “it is important not only to patch holes, but to seriously modernize networks and equipment.”
“Now our first priority is to connect houses as soon as possible and take care of our residents,” he emphasized. “There are points in Klimovsk where you can warm up, drink hot tea or have a snack. We also distribute heaters and blankets here if you need them.”
The head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered to check all the facts of restrictions on the supply of energy resources in populated areas of the Moscow region. Moreover, at first it was about checking the fact of limiting the supply of electricity and inadequate heat supply to residents of the Chekhov urban district, then department employees began studying similar cases in Solnechnogorsk, Balashikha, Lobnya, Podolsk, Khimki, Lyubertsy, Ramensky and Naro-Fominsky districts.
However, residents continue to complain on social networks that the authorities are not providing accurate information either on the promised possibility of recalculating the amount for heating in January, or on the completion date of restoration work. Podolsk resident Olga Kudryavtseva told Kommersant that it’s cold not only in houses, but also in office buildings, “so there’s nowhere to warm up.” “We wear jackets at work and at home, we sit hugging the heater,” she complains. “Many are already sick, they spend money on cold medicine, obviously no one will reimburse them.”
Problems with energy supply during the Christmas holidays were also observed in the capital.
The Ministry of Energy reported to Kommersant that on January 4 at 05:42 in Moscow, at the electrical substation of the 500 kV Beskudnikovo substation, a fire occurred in the chamber of power transformer No. 4. As a result, the power supply to 17 distribution points and 50 transformer substations of the Moscow cable network was disrupted. In the Bibirevo, Otradnoe, Severnoye and Yuzhnoye Medvedkovo districts, 173 residential buildings and 51 central heating units of PJSC MOEK fell into the shutdown zone. In addition, 27 residential buildings were disconnected, the power supply of which via direct feeders from the 500 kV substation was provided by the electric grid companies JSC MSK Energo, LLC Kaskad-Energo and LLC Energy Technologies. By 10:30 the fire was extinguished by the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations. On the evening of January 5, all residential buildings were again powered using a permanent power supply.
“The last time a major power outage in Moscow occurred was in 2005 due to an accident at the Chagino substation, after which investments in the Moscow power grid complex began to be measured in hundreds of billions of rubles,” commented Sergei Sasim, director of the Center for Research in the Electric Power Industry at the Higher School of Economics. In his opinion, a power outage after an accident may be a consequence of defects in the management system of production assets of electric grid companies, incomplete accounting of accident rates on cable lines and insufficient attention to accident rates when planning business processes. Separately, Mr. Sasim notes that the regulatory system for the electrical grid complex does not have effective mechanisms for consumers to claim compensation in the event of an interruption of power supply. “The lack of influence of a decrease in the reliability of power supply on the economic performance of TSOs further stimulates the emergence of situations of this kind,” the electric power industry is confident. Accidents in the Moscow region are observed more often due to technological differences in the electrical grids of the capital and the Moscow region, continues Mr. Sasim. For example, in 2010 (during freezing rain), it was the region’s residents who were left without electricity, unlike Moscow consumers, the expert recalls. This was largely due to the fact that in the capital almost all transmission lines are cable (located underground), while in the region there are many overhead lines.
Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Communal Services Svetlana Razvorotneva (United Russia), commenting on the situation in a conversation with Kommersant, noted that 40% of the communal infrastructure in the country requires immediate replacement. “Most energy networks were built in the USSR or according to Soviet standards, which did not take into account energy efficiency issues and, in principle, were noticeably outdated,” explains the parliamentarian. A serious problem that could lead to massive disruptions in the Moscow region, according to Ms. Razvorotneva, is mass construction: “Huge residential areas are being added to already outdated boiler houses, but there is no synchronization of urban planning and housing and communal services development, as a result, even with minor abnormal temperatures, problems occur ” The deputy nevertheless notes that the authorities have begun to pay more attention to solving the problem in the last few years. “The federal budget for 2024–2026 includes 150 billion rubles for these purposes,” said Ms. Razvorotneva. “The government finally realized that the regions will not be able to solve this problem on their own, but it will not be possible to move such a colossus of problems at once – it will take a lot of time.”
Power outages during the New Year holidays also occurred in other regions of Russia.
Thus, in Pervouralsk on December 29, due to a break in the heating main, 3 thousand residents in 28 apartment buildings were left without heating. Residents of the Kanavinsky district of Nizhny Novgorod complained about the shutdown of heating and hot water. In the village of Krasnye Tkachi, Yaroslavl Region, on January 3, a private boiler house failed, which provides heating to 25 houses and 1.5 thousand residents, and in the Traktorozavodsky and Krasnooktyabrsky districts of Volgograd, several thousand residents celebrated Christmas without heating; a number of outages occurred in Yekaterinburg.
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