Cherepetskaya GRES is forced to switch to gas

The government will develop a special financing mechanism for Inter RAO in order to switch the unprofitable Cherepetskaya GRES from coal to gas. Stations want to assign the status of “forced” generation with a high tariff. To do this, it will be necessary to change the legislation: the GRES was built under the CSA program and is obliged to work in the market under general conditions for 25 years. The industry opposes it, not wanting to pay the costs of generation through new non-market mechanisms.

The government instructed the Ministry of Energy to come up with ways to finance the modernization of the coal-fired Cherepetskaya GRES (450 MW) Inter RAO in the Tula region, follows from the minutes of the meeting with First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak (“Kommersant” saw the document dated January 31) .

The energy company proposed to consider as one of the options the transfer of the station to a forced operation mode. In this status, the station will receive a high capacity tariff.

Inter RAO has been trying for several years now to find a way to convert Cherepetskaya GRES from coal to gas. The station suffers “huge losses” due to rising coal prices, Inter RAO told Kommersant: fuel has risen in price by 68.5% in two years, and electricity prices on the day-ahead market (DAM), for example, in 2022 grew by only 2.8%. At the same time, the station receives increased payments for capacity, since it was built under the program of capacity supply contracts (CDA). Payments under the CSA will end in 2025, due to which the station’s income in the capacity market will fall by more than seven times, to 230 thousand rubles. for 1 MWh per month, calculated Sergey Sasim from the Institute of Economics and Regulation of Infrastructure Industries of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.

Previously, Inter RAO wanted to build new power units based on GE turbines. But now we are talking about switching boilers to gas. This requires the construction of a gas pipeline and direct work on power units. According to independent analyst Yuri Melnikov, the company will have to completely reconstruct the boilers, build a gas infrastructure inside the station and build two independent main gas pipelines.

Inter RAO cannot shut down a loss-making power unit. Under the current rules, a new station built under the CSA cannot be closed for 25 years after the completion of increased payments. For the same reasons, the company is not able to apply for a special status of work in forced mode. In order to implement Inter RAO’s idea, it will obviously require amendments to the legislation. The company told Kommersant that they had submitted proposals and were ready to assist the ministry and the government in preparing decisions.

At the meeting, Inter RAO also raised the issue of the efficiency of the operation of the Gusinoozerskaya GRES (1.2 GW) in Buryatia.

At the request of the company, the government instructed the Ministry of Energy, JSC Russian Railways and other departments to work out the issue of building a railway line 79 km from the Okino-Klyuchevskoye field (owned by Inter RAO) to the Kharankhoy station to deliver coal to the station. The cost of construction, according to the head of “Infoline-Analytics” Mikhail Burmistrov, may be about 7-10 billion rubles.

At the same time, the construction of new capacities may soon be required in the area of ​​the Gusinoozerskaya GRES. The “System Operator” (SO, power system dispatcher) predicts an energy shortage in Siberia from 2024 and recommends building a 230 MW generation in the southern part of Buryatia.

“Proposals to oblige consumers to pay for the transfer of power units from coal to gas through the “forced” generation tariff or to finance the construction of a railway line in the price of capacity are quite inventive, previously unused ways to impose the costs of generation on energy consumers,” according to the Community of Energy Consumers.

The government also instructed the Ministry of Energy to consider Inter RAO’s proposal to develop a mechanism to compensate for losses of coal-fired thermal power plants at DAM. One of the options is “indexation of tariffs (by the method of actually incurred costs) supplied under regulated contracts (RC)”. Electricity and capacity under the RC are bought by last resort suppliers for supply to the population. Sergey Sasim warns that indexation could be offset by an additional increase in tariffs for the population, but it will be problematic to implement such a scenario due to tariff restrictions. As a result, an increase in the price of RD can be passed on to business through an increase in electricity transmission tariffs, he notes.

Polina Smertina