Heat at full power capacity – Newspaper Kommersant No. 157 (7358) dated 08/27/2022

Electricity consumption in Russia due to abnormal heat returned to growth after two months of stagnation. Since the beginning of August, total demand has increased by 2.6% yoy, and this week the power system passed a new record summer peak of 126.7 GW of power consumption. As industrial production falls due to a slowdown in economic activity, the weather is likely to be the main factor influencing the level of demand in the country.

Demand for power capacity in the Unified Energy System of Russia (UES) has reached a record high. A new summer consumption maximum of 126.65 GW was recorded on the afternoon of August 24, the System Operator (SO, power system dispatcher) reported. The last summer record of 126.14 GW was recorded on July 19, 2021. For comparison: the winter maximum in the UES of Russia, reached in December 2021, is 161.4 GW.

Electricity consumption in the UES of Russia from August 1 to 25 amounted to 67.9 billion kWh, an increase of 2.6% yoy, according to current data on the SO website. Demand returned to growth again after two months of stagnation: in June, the figure grew by only 0.5% yoy (to 79.4 billion kWh), and in July it fell by 0.2% (81.9 billion kWh). h). Both months, according to Kommersant, industrial enterprises significantly reduced the purchase of power, and the population, on the contrary, began to increase energy consumption. As reported in SO, in July, the consumption of electricity in the energy system of the Middle Volga was reduced by automobile plants and gas transportation enterprises, and in the energy system of the Center – by metallurgists and railway transport.

The increase in demand for electricity in August is mainly a weather factor caused by abnormal heat in almost the entire territory of Russia and, accordingly, the increased use of refrigeration and air conditioning systems, says Oleg Dudikhin from Kept. According to Rosstat, the volume of industrial production for the first six months, cleared of the seasonal factor, shows a decline since the beginning of this year. “Compared to the beginning of 2019, the growth in industrial production, excluding seasonality, is only 2%. Thus, the industry’s contribution to the growth of electricity consumption is insignificant,” notes Oleg Dudikhin.

However, in some power systems, it seems that the contribution to peak load is not so much from heat, but from production needs, says Yevgeny Rudakov from IPEM. The increase in electricity consumption since the beginning of August, he notes, comes against the background of almost identical average temperatures compared to last year.

Moreover, in the energy systems of Siberia and the East, the historical peaks of the summer maximum on August 4–6 were associated, according to SO data, precisely with the load of large-scale industry (including Russian Railways, gold and coal mining, and the Taishet aluminum plant).

The dynamics of prices on the day-ahead market (DAM, the main electricity trading sector) in the two price zones of the energy market differ. In the first price zone (the European part of the Russian Federation and the Urals), there is even a slight decrease in prices (minus 2.4% in the first 25 days of August), and in the second (Siberia) – a significant increase (plus 30.6% in the first 25 days of August) , says Evgeny Rudakov. In his opinion, the sharp increase in DAM prices in Siberia is largely due to the low water content of the Yenisei, which limits the generation of HPPs.

Consumption in 2022 will largely depend on sanctions pressure and the ability of the economy to absorb it, says Denis Krasnovsky from ACRA. According to his forecast, the figure for the whole year will be in the range from minus 0.5% to plus 0.5% relative to 2021. The “Community of Energy Consumers” (which unites industrial consumers of electricity) estimated a possible drop in demand for the entire current year at 5%, excluding the weather factor, given the forecast for a decline in GDP (see Kommersant on July 19).

Polina Smertina