Kilowatts have found application – Newspaper Kommersant No. 6 (7451) dated 01/16/2023

Electricity consumption in Russia in 2022 increased by 1.5%. Analysts believe that demand could increase due to the launch of new enterprises in Siberia and the Far East, an increase in the load on the military-industrial complex and the supply of electricity to “new regions”. Electricity production growth was modest due to a halt in exports to the EU, and experts expect a fall in 2023, as supplies abroad may be the lowest in recent years.

The System Operator (SO, power system dispatcher) has published part of the data on the operation of the Unified Energy System (UES) of Russia for 2022. Judging by the report, electricity production has grown much less than its domestic consumption. Electricity consumption increased by 1.5% year-on-year to 1.106 trillion kWh, while generation increased by only 0.6% to 1.121 trillion kWh.

The production of electricity for export is taken into account in the indicator of total generation, so one of the key reasons for its lagging behind domestic demand may be a decrease in the physical volume of supplies abroad, says IPEM Deputy Head Alexander Grigoriev. The balance of electricity flows in 2022 (exports from Russia minus imports) amounted to 15.2 billion kWh. The indicator collapsed by 36% year-on-year due to the suspension of exports to Finland and the Baltic states in the spring of 2022. Deliveries from Russia to the EU in January-May, judging by the reports of European regulators, amounted to about 5.5 billion kWh, of which 65% came from Finland. Thus, they were below the pandemic 2020. At the same time, Russia supplied a record amount of electricity to China in 2022 — about 4.4–4.5 billion kWh, according to preliminary estimates.

The cessation of exports to the EU should have led to a drop in electricity production in the North-West (which includes Kaliningrad, the Leningrad and Pskov regions), and an increase in exports to China should have led to a significant increase in generation in the Far East. However, the CO report does not provide data on generation by region. According to Kommersant’s estimates, electricity production in the Far East increased by more than 4%, while in the rest of the country the figure increased by only 0.5%.

SO in the report does not write about the factors that influenced the significant increase in electricity consumption. Demand, excluding the impact of the weather, fell only in two energy systems – in the Middle Volga (minus 0.5% yoy) and the North-West (minus 0.4%). The most notable increase was in Siberia (plus 3.4%) and the Far East (plus 3.8%), which could be due to an increase in freight traffic and the launch of new energy-intensive enterprises, independent analyst Yuri Melnikov believes.

Electricity consumption in the energy system of the South also increased markedly, by 2.6% year-on-year. This includes, among other things, Crimea, from where electricity flows to the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions began in 2022, the authorities of these regions reported. The total consumption also includes technological losses of electricity in the networks, the volume of which could increase last year. In 2020, the volume of losses in the distribution networks of Rosseti amounted to 46.4 billion kWh, and in the backbone networks of FGC – 23 billion.

In the first half of 2022, the situation with electricity consumption was assessed much worse, but there are few reasons for optimism, they say in the Community of Energy Consumers (which unites industrial consumers of electricity). They believe that the increase in consumption is due to the launch of large investment projects in the Far East and Siberia, the intensive work of military-industrial complex enterprises and, in part, the increase in consumption among the population. The stable decrease in the level of unregulated power consumption peak (the amount of power paid for by the industry) compared to 2021, observed in the second half of the year, indicates that the situation in the economy remains difficult, the association believes. Judging by the operational reports of the Trade System Administrator, in the European part of the country and in the Urals, unregulated peak power consumption fell by 1.9%, to 65.6 GW, and in Siberia it increased by 3%, to 19.2 GW.

“Electricity consumption was growing, since there were no obvious negative consequences for the economy due to sanctions, energy-intensive industries, such as oil production, showed growth,” says Sergey Rozhenko from Kept. “We will most likely see the real picture of consumption dynamics this year.” . Given the loss of exports to the EU, electricity generation can be expected to fall in line with domestic consumption. The regulator’s forecast for exports in 2023, excluding the dropped EU supplies, will be about 6.4 billion kWh, which will be the lowest figure in recent years.

Polina Smertina