Lamp mr. Why is electricity so expensive in Russia?
Against the background of rising gasoline, no one is surprised that electricity tariffs are rising, despite the depreciating energy sources. Although the kilowatt-hour in Russia is already more expensive than in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and even Italy. And this difference is reflected in the cost of each loaf of bread or tank “Armata” is the saddest way for the Russian economy. The fact that electricity prices seem to be taken from the ceiling was clearly expressed by the residents of the capital of Armenia in the summer of 2015, forcing the Russian supplier of Inter RAO to leave the local market. In Russia itself, millions of consumers are also sure that they are being deceived. But they don’t understand exactly how and what they should do now.
"Treatment" by electricity
In the settlement of Nizhnyaya Oselki (Leningrad Region), almost all owners of private houses are at a loss. I calculated a resident electricity consumption by the meter - like 7 thousand rubles have to be paid. Suddenly electricians come and stun - you have 47 thousand of debt. Going to understand the office of a sales company in Sertolovo - are sentenced to pay 17 thousand. Debtors are often called by a robot with a reminder of the total amount of debt: today - 50 thousand rubles, tomorrow - 18 thousand, the day after tomorrow - 60 thousand. People feel the catch: they can't jump numbers like that! Moreover, debt tends to not only grow, but also decline without any prepayments.
For debt in 30 – 40 thousand rubles electricity is disconnected, despite the cold weather. Peterburg Sales Company agrees to return the light to the house only if the debt is fully repaid - not half of them are satisfied, even if tomorrow is the New Year, and a family with small children has no other housing.
“The situation with electricity was one of the main reasons why we sold the house in Nizhny Oselki,” Ekaterina said. - In a house where no one lived, there was a debt of more than 40 thousand, the electricity was cut off. Let's go to Sertolovo to understand: how do you argue them? De jure, everything is correct: someone took the readings from our meter, the accounting department calculated according to the formula known to them. There is no independent arbiter, and we have no facts to appeal. That all the neighbors have accounts the same surprise is not an argument. The last straw was the promise of the sales company to turn on the electricity on the same day if paid. But it turned out that it includes another organization for a fee on their written prescription within five working days. And we must go bow down from Sertolovo to Garbolovo for 30 km. Buses do not go. And tomorrow is the New Year.
At the office of the Petersburg Sales Company in Sertolovo, they insist on the need to fight defaulters. And an error in the calculations is excluded, because the calculus is engaged in an impartial computer. In addition, consumers themselves can steal energy from each other, and quite wealthy people, good neighbors often commit this.
Power engineers usually give the impression of self-confident people who are not afraid of being grabbed by the hand. In the media it was reported that in the same Leningrad Oblast the suppliers of Petersburg Sales Company and RKS-Energo once presented an ultimatum to the governor. If the housing and communal enterprises of the region do not return the billionth debt to them, they will leave residents without water by turning off the electricity at the local Vodokanal. What should the governor do? Declare war on energy? But the owner of the same Petersburg Sales Company is the energy giant Inter RAO, where the key figures recorded are Igor Sechin and Boris Kovalchuk. Do not really fight. Perhaps, therefore, about serious
No other criminal cases involving electricity trade are heard. But on tapes News full of messages about the next joint briefing by the prosecutor's office and the electricity supplier, at which they threaten to flip flippers to the next debtor.
At the same time, the security forces do not at all strive to disassemble where these debts came from. For example, on the Internet, residents of a small gardening complain about the inaction of the authorities. The meter readings at the substation are greater than the sum of the meter readings of all 15 houses, the consumption of lamps and the loss in the overhead line. Every month, extra 10 thous. KWh are heated. Perhaps, instead of the neutral wire, a tap to ground is used, and the meter does not work. Or just threw the wire. People are trying to check the load with a clamp meter (such measurements have a large error) and make unscheduled checks. All arrows point to the substation, but the energy supervisor does not want to witness the findings of gardeners. And without the appropriate conclusion and the police will not move.
Ways to chemize with a lot of electricity supplies. The main principle is that its total number cannot be registered. If you loaded ten tractors into the train, and drove five, then everything is simple - five pieces were stolen along the way. For power engineers, this logic does not work, and billions can be written off for the loss of electricity.
According to Rostekhnadzor, over a third of all energy resources in the country are irretrievably lost or used inefficiently. A candidate of technical sciences, Valentin Krasnik described these tricks in the book "101 way of electricity theft", 50 years working on positions from an electrician to the inspector of power supervision.
“In the outback, where gasification is absent and the houses are heated with electric heaters, the meters record only 10 – 15% of the electricity consumed,” says Valentin Krasnik. - Low solvency of the population and growth of tariffs contribute to the growth of electricity theft, the methods of which are constantly being improved. I admit that many supervisors look at it through their fingers - who will pass their.
Apparently, the largest market participants also do not seek openness. On the Petersburg Sales Company website, in the “Information Disclosure” column, the latest available report on electricity volumes dates back to April 2012. And information about the number and value of contracts - May of the same year.
Exile from RAW
Under the USSR, everything looked more transparent: industrial enterprises paid 2 pennies per kilowatt-hour, and the population - 4 pennies. There was the Unified Energy System of the country, where the same power plants alternately fed consumers in different time zones as day and night changed there, which allowed them to save power. The profitability of the power supply system reached 15% - which was quite enough for its reproduction and development. In 1992, the desire of the authorities to maintain control over the energy sector was expressed in the creation of a natural monopoly, RAO UES of Russia. By 2004, RAO companies owned 72% of installed capacity in the country and transported 96% electricity.
However, the effectiveness of work under the leadership of Anatoly Chubais fell even in comparison with Soviet times. In 2002, economist Andrei Illarionov called RAO UES “a national disgrace,” because in just two years the company's market capitalization had fallen by a factor of three — by $ 6 billion. With an increase in the number of employees, labor productivity also decreased. Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov acknowledged that RAO UES artificially inflates the tariffs for connecting to the networks of small businesses. And the head of the Federal Energy Commission, Georgi Kutovoy, was confident that electricity tariffs could be reduced by 30 – 40% by improving the company's performance. It was said about the banal theft. The total funds received from the sale of energy assets of RAO UES reached 30 billion dollars, of which the budget received almost nothing. In the Far East, electricity was driven to China for export, and new Russian consumers have been waiting for the connection for years. In general, reform has matured.
Or rather, the smell section of the pie of unprecedented proportions. Under the control of the state should remain network, distribution and dispatching activities, which implies only costs. And for private owners opened Eldorado - generation and sales. Generating companies, with the exception of RusHydro and Rosenergoatom, were privatized in just two years, although it took up to five years for an ordinary homeowner to simply connect to a pole a hundred meters from the house. In 2007, almost half of the power plants passed into private hands, and a year later RAO split into independent companies, only two of which were state-owned.
It cannot be said that private owners were completely untied: stable tariffs remained for military and other strategic facilities. But gradually the power engineers got the right to switch off the same Vodokanal on 90% for debts. In 2002, when Chubais was just beginning to reform RAO UES, electricity in Moscow cost 90 kopecks per kWh. And since July 2015, the capital has paid 5,03 rubles per kilowatt. The difference was 5,5 times although before the reform, Anatoly Chubais promised many miracles, including a reduction in electricity prices by half in three years! Instead, a wild regional imbalance was received: in 2015, Buryatia paid 4 rubles per kilowatt, and the neighboring Irkutsk region - 84 kopeks.
Today, the other results of the reform are in full view. In 2012, the head of the supervisory board of the Energy Consumer Community, Alexander Starchenko, noted that the networkers themselves had announced the allocation of additional 3 trillion rubles for some "investment programs to improve network reliability." At that time, the entire defense budget was 2 trillion rubles, and at 3,5 trillion it is possible to overhaul all multi-storey residential buildings in the country. Over the previous five years, network companies have already spent the same 3 trillion on similar goals from the 5 – 6 trillions collected from consumers. What is the result?
- About the results of investments says only one point - “loss reduction”. Losses have fallen by just 0,5 – 1%, says Alexander Starchenko. - At the same time, more than half of the tariff is made up of the costs of distribution grid companies, which bring electricity to the final consumer. At the regional level, networkers' appetites are not limited by anything. The costs per unit of serviced networks in a large holding may be several times higher than in a more modest company located in a neighboring entity.
It turns out that power engineers spend huge amounts of money on upgrading networks, the results of which are invisible to the eye. And tariffs for citizens grow in parallel with these investments. Until last year’s collapse of the ruble, the Russians had already paid at the level of the United States or Italy - countries with a much more affluent population and non-declared “great energy powers”. True, according to RIA "Rating" experts, by November 2015 Russia was among the top three European countries with the cheapest electricity. But when the World Bank assessed the availability of electricity, Russia was in the 184-th place of the 185 possible. Worse things were only in Madagascar.
Moreover, the methodology of this rating is absolutely transparent. It takes a typical two-story warehouse on the outskirts of the capital. How much time and money do you need to spend so that it acquires the electrical power of 140 kW? It turned out that in Moscow for this you need to lay out 200 thousand dollars and spend 281 day. Of course, if you do not solve the issue with bribes.
But the most important failure of energy reform is striking not just business, but simple consumers. Promoting the privatization of the energy sector at the beginning of the 2000s, the management of RAO UES has assured that we can, like the British, compare tariffs with different distribution companies and switch to another supplier with one click of the mouse, as if it were a cellular operator. The problem is not even that by 2016 nothing like this happened. We just move in the opposite direction.
Interesting fact
In 2013, a St. Petersburg businessman, Grigory Khibovsky, made several shots at the office of the State Unitary Enterprise “Lensvet”, after which he committed suicide. Desperately driven to despair, Khibovsky left a detailed description of the facts of corruption in organizations under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Engineering Support of St. Petersburg. However, even such a radical way of paying attention to the problems did not help: none of the defendants in Khibovsky's letter became an accused in criminal cases.
Master Fetishchev's visa
A resident of the Lower Oselkov one click of a mouse can only pay for electricity. Unless, of course, he did not turn off the Internet along with the light. Everything else from the start is deliberately overwhelming.
Petersburg, Irina, buying a house in Oselki, could not imagine that it might not be connected to the electricity grid - after all, almost Peter, 15 km before Kad. It turned out that the bulbs were burning because the house was illegally powered from neighbors. Although there was a branch along the border of the site, the local Lenenergo stubbornly asserted that there were no facilities at the substation. And the neighbors for some reason they have?
“So we lived for five years, but in 2009, Lenenergo announced an“ amnesty, ”says Irina. - That is, we can recognize that we took energy from our neighbors and nothing will happen for us. Let's go to Pushkin, have been looking for the street, which is not even on the map. An employee of this mysterious office showed us a block diagram on four pages - these are the steps of approvals that were to be completed. And then she gave business cards to people who could help for 200 thousand rubles. True, in the regional Lenenergo in Sertolovo we were reassured: if we do it ourselves, 50 thousands will be released. We were treated favorably, because we agreed to work with the company of the sons of one of the Sertol managers - they set up a pillar for us. But still, I had to go from St. Petersburg to Sertolovo 20 – 25 once, and the entire barrel organ lasted for six months. Among the countless approvals, a master Fetishchev’s visa was required at the Rosseti branch office in Garbolovo. And he has no visiting hours at all. I was only told that he would be at a gas station in Vaskelovo in 15 minutes. I rushed to the wild speed: I see, the special vehicle is already driving off the gas station. I interrupted - blocked the exit of the entire gas station, Fetishchev signed without looking. Later, I had a dream: I was flying to Greece for a holiday, and the border guard looks at my passport and suddenly throws it in my face: “How dare you ?! And where is the master Fetishchev's visa? ”
There is no legal alternative to this quest. Even if you want to install some wind turbine in your territory, it is even more difficult to register it. And this is not only the whim of Sertolovsk power engineers - according to such rules all Russia lives for some reason. In some places they are even much tougher. There are cases when ordinary residents who pay their bills on time have turned off the light for some intermediary’s debts. And sometimes the shutdown of the enterprise from electricity looks like a component of a raider attack.
The authorities do not notice all this? By no means! In December, the 2011 of Vladimir Putin, right on the Day of the Power Engineer, arranged a grand dressing, which caused eight loud resignations the very next day. In particular, the national leader said: “Of all the 352 people tested by the executive staff of the energy complex at 169 officials - almost every second - has affiliation with 385 commercial organizations, except, of course, for those where they already work. It is far from isolated cases when the energy complexes of entire regions of the Russian Federation are controlled simply by family clans ... Well, absolutely go crazy already! Sorry, just no other words ... "
According to Putin, the energy system of the North Caucasus region is controlled by Mr. Kaitov’s family. Consumers pay for the energy supplied to the accounts of affiliated firms that act as an agent for energy supply companies. One of the managers of the Urals branch of JSC FGC UES, Nikitin, also established five companies related to the repair and maintenance of local energy facilities. For several years, the state-owned RusHydro has been providing multibillion-dollar loans and buying interest-free bills of exchange from some offshore company located in Cyprus. In the Central Federal District, there is a scheme for the withdrawal of energy from offshores - as much as 25 billion rubles have surpassed. Vladimir Vladimirovich called dozens of names and organizations that evening, and no one subsequently sued him for libel.
On the other hand, we did not see any high-profile criminal cases: the cleaning of the industry was limited to resignations, which did not change much. According to the director of the Russian Center for Transparency International Elena Panfilova, no systematic legislative work to prevent such situations.because the authorities are afraid of such precise regulation as fire. In the course of a one-time campaign, you can dismiss anyone who wants to, but not touch their own.
Nobody touched the former top managers of RAO UES, which today appear on the Forbes list. For example, Mikhail Abyzov, Deputy Chubais in Finance, took 2012 in the 76 ranking with a fortune of 1,2 billion dollars. Its main asset was the group of companies RU-COM, which included in 2007 the engineering, construction and energy divisions of the abolished RAO UES. And three years ago, Abyzov became a “minister without a portfolio” - advisor to the president of the Russian Federation on work with the “Open Government”.
And the latest high-profile cases against power engineers give out more like a fight between bulldogs under the carpet than a systemic fight against corruption. In August, 2015 in Murmansk put energy magnate Gennady Shubin, who was close to the previous governor, on 12 for years, and was not about to give up their positions. And in Tver for the second year, the owners of power grid assets Oleg Shadrin, Sergey Konchenkov and Artyom Potekhin are in jail. It is significant that the case was initiated by a local monopolist, and the FSB was involved in its investigation.
Usually, the real fight against corruption has different results. As a result of genuine ordering, tariffs, which experts admit to almost half-blown, would have collapsed. Connecting a private house to networks would be made, as in neighboring Finland, by electronic application and would cost 100 euros. The websites of market participants would timely publish the budget and other financial indicators. And the leaders of the state segment of the industry announced information about the business of family members, as if the most ordinary deputies of the State Duma.
Not in the horse world
According to the Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2014, in terms of power generation, Russia shared 4 – 5 ranks with Japan, behind the United States, China and India.
Russia produced 1,064 kWh, which is twice as large as France and four times smaller than the United States. In terms of per capita output, we are at the same level as Germany and Denmark. And although we did not reach our own level of 1990 (1,082 GW · h), Russia could be called an energy-safe country, if not for the situation with the "loss" of electricity and the inaccessibility of many areas.
At the same time, resource-saving forms of energy production are poorly used in Russia. In the 21st century, only two new hydropower plants were commissioned - Bureyskaya and Boguchanskaya. And the latter began to build more under the USSR. Although Russia has a huge potential of sea and ocean bays with tidal heights in 10 meters, tidal power stations have not developed. The powerful Mezenskaya and Penzhinsk TPPs have been in the design stage since the Brezhnev era, although the construction of each of them would lead to annual fuel savings of 12,6 mln tonnes of “equivalent fuel” and prevent the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Of the 56 geothermal deposits, only 20 is used. And the economic potential of wind energy is about 260 billion kWh per year - that is, about 30% of the production of all power plants in Russia.
"Treatment" by electricity
In the settlement of Nizhnyaya Oselki (Leningrad Region), almost all owners of private houses are at a loss. I calculated a resident electricity consumption by the meter - like 7 thousand rubles have to be paid. Suddenly electricians come and stun - you have 47 thousand of debt. Going to understand the office of a sales company in Sertolovo - are sentenced to pay 17 thousand. Debtors are often called by a robot with a reminder of the total amount of debt: today - 50 thousand rubles, tomorrow - 18 thousand, the day after tomorrow - 60 thousand. People feel the catch: they can't jump numbers like that! Moreover, debt tends to not only grow, but also decline without any prepayments.
For debt in 30 – 40 thousand rubles electricity is disconnected, despite the cold weather. Peterburg Sales Company agrees to return the light to the house only if the debt is fully repaid - not half of them are satisfied, even if tomorrow is the New Year, and a family with small children has no other housing.
“The situation with electricity was one of the main reasons why we sold the house in Nizhny Oselki,” Ekaterina said. - In a house where no one lived, there was a debt of more than 40 thousand, the electricity was cut off. Let's go to Sertolovo to understand: how do you argue them? De jure, everything is correct: someone took the readings from our meter, the accounting department calculated according to the formula known to them. There is no independent arbiter, and we have no facts to appeal. That all the neighbors have accounts the same surprise is not an argument. The last straw was the promise of the sales company to turn on the electricity on the same day if paid. But it turned out that it includes another organization for a fee on their written prescription within five working days. And we must go bow down from Sertolovo to Garbolovo for 30 km. Buses do not go. And tomorrow is the New Year.
At the office of the Petersburg Sales Company in Sertolovo, they insist on the need to fight defaulters. And an error in the calculations is excluded, because the calculus is engaged in an impartial computer. In addition, consumers themselves can steal energy from each other, and quite wealthy people, good neighbors often commit this.
Power engineers usually give the impression of self-confident people who are not afraid of being grabbed by the hand. In the media it was reported that in the same Leningrad Oblast the suppliers of Petersburg Sales Company and RKS-Energo once presented an ultimatum to the governor. If the housing and communal enterprises of the region do not return the billionth debt to them, they will leave residents without water by turning off the electricity at the local Vodokanal. What should the governor do? Declare war on energy? But the owner of the same Petersburg Sales Company is the energy giant Inter RAO, where the key figures recorded are Igor Sechin and Boris Kovalchuk. Do not really fight. Perhaps, therefore, about serious
No other criminal cases involving electricity trade are heard. But on tapes News full of messages about the next joint briefing by the prosecutor's office and the electricity supplier, at which they threaten to flip flippers to the next debtor.
At the same time, the security forces do not at all strive to disassemble where these debts came from. For example, on the Internet, residents of a small gardening complain about the inaction of the authorities. The meter readings at the substation are greater than the sum of the meter readings of all 15 houses, the consumption of lamps and the loss in the overhead line. Every month, extra 10 thous. KWh are heated. Perhaps, instead of the neutral wire, a tap to ground is used, and the meter does not work. Or just threw the wire. People are trying to check the load with a clamp meter (such measurements have a large error) and make unscheduled checks. All arrows point to the substation, but the energy supervisor does not want to witness the findings of gardeners. And without the appropriate conclusion and the police will not move.
Ways to chemize with a lot of electricity supplies. The main principle is that its total number cannot be registered. If you loaded ten tractors into the train, and drove five, then everything is simple - five pieces were stolen along the way. For power engineers, this logic does not work, and billions can be written off for the loss of electricity.
According to Rostekhnadzor, over a third of all energy resources in the country are irretrievably lost or used inefficiently. A candidate of technical sciences, Valentin Krasnik described these tricks in the book "101 way of electricity theft", 50 years working on positions from an electrician to the inspector of power supervision.
“In the outback, where gasification is absent and the houses are heated with electric heaters, the meters record only 10 – 15% of the electricity consumed,” says Valentin Krasnik. - Low solvency of the population and growth of tariffs contribute to the growth of electricity theft, the methods of which are constantly being improved. I admit that many supervisors look at it through their fingers - who will pass their.
Apparently, the largest market participants also do not seek openness. On the Petersburg Sales Company website, in the “Information Disclosure” column, the latest available report on electricity volumes dates back to April 2012. And information about the number and value of contracts - May of the same year.
Exile from RAW
Under the USSR, everything looked more transparent: industrial enterprises paid 2 pennies per kilowatt-hour, and the population - 4 pennies. There was the Unified Energy System of the country, where the same power plants alternately fed consumers in different time zones as day and night changed there, which allowed them to save power. The profitability of the power supply system reached 15% - which was quite enough for its reproduction and development. In 1992, the desire of the authorities to maintain control over the energy sector was expressed in the creation of a natural monopoly, RAO UES of Russia. By 2004, RAO companies owned 72% of installed capacity in the country and transported 96% electricity.
However, the effectiveness of work under the leadership of Anatoly Chubais fell even in comparison with Soviet times. In 2002, economist Andrei Illarionov called RAO UES “a national disgrace,” because in just two years the company's market capitalization had fallen by a factor of three — by $ 6 billion. With an increase in the number of employees, labor productivity also decreased. Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov acknowledged that RAO UES artificially inflates the tariffs for connecting to the networks of small businesses. And the head of the Federal Energy Commission, Georgi Kutovoy, was confident that electricity tariffs could be reduced by 30 – 40% by improving the company's performance. It was said about the banal theft. The total funds received from the sale of energy assets of RAO UES reached 30 billion dollars, of which the budget received almost nothing. In the Far East, electricity was driven to China for export, and new Russian consumers have been waiting for the connection for years. In general, reform has matured.
Or rather, the smell section of the pie of unprecedented proportions. Under the control of the state should remain network, distribution and dispatching activities, which implies only costs. And for private owners opened Eldorado - generation and sales. Generating companies, with the exception of RusHydro and Rosenergoatom, were privatized in just two years, although it took up to five years for an ordinary homeowner to simply connect to a pole a hundred meters from the house. In 2007, almost half of the power plants passed into private hands, and a year later RAO split into independent companies, only two of which were state-owned.
It cannot be said that private owners were completely untied: stable tariffs remained for military and other strategic facilities. But gradually the power engineers got the right to switch off the same Vodokanal on 90% for debts. In 2002, when Chubais was just beginning to reform RAO UES, electricity in Moscow cost 90 kopecks per kWh. And since July 2015, the capital has paid 5,03 rubles per kilowatt. The difference was 5,5 times although before the reform, Anatoly Chubais promised many miracles, including a reduction in electricity prices by half in three years! Instead, a wild regional imbalance was received: in 2015, Buryatia paid 4 rubles per kilowatt, and the neighboring Irkutsk region - 84 kopeks.
Today, the other results of the reform are in full view. In 2012, the head of the supervisory board of the Energy Consumer Community, Alexander Starchenko, noted that the networkers themselves had announced the allocation of additional 3 trillion rubles for some "investment programs to improve network reliability." At that time, the entire defense budget was 2 trillion rubles, and at 3,5 trillion it is possible to overhaul all multi-storey residential buildings in the country. Over the previous five years, network companies have already spent the same 3 trillion on similar goals from the 5 – 6 trillions collected from consumers. What is the result?
- About the results of investments says only one point - “loss reduction”. Losses have fallen by just 0,5 – 1%, says Alexander Starchenko. - At the same time, more than half of the tariff is made up of the costs of distribution grid companies, which bring electricity to the final consumer. At the regional level, networkers' appetites are not limited by anything. The costs per unit of serviced networks in a large holding may be several times higher than in a more modest company located in a neighboring entity.
It turns out that power engineers spend huge amounts of money on upgrading networks, the results of which are invisible to the eye. And tariffs for citizens grow in parallel with these investments. Until last year’s collapse of the ruble, the Russians had already paid at the level of the United States or Italy - countries with a much more affluent population and non-declared “great energy powers”. True, according to RIA "Rating" experts, by November 2015 Russia was among the top three European countries with the cheapest electricity. But when the World Bank assessed the availability of electricity, Russia was in the 184-th place of the 185 possible. Worse things were only in Madagascar.
Moreover, the methodology of this rating is absolutely transparent. It takes a typical two-story warehouse on the outskirts of the capital. How much time and money do you need to spend so that it acquires the electrical power of 140 kW? It turned out that in Moscow for this you need to lay out 200 thousand dollars and spend 281 day. Of course, if you do not solve the issue with bribes.
But the most important failure of energy reform is striking not just business, but simple consumers. Promoting the privatization of the energy sector at the beginning of the 2000s, the management of RAO UES has assured that we can, like the British, compare tariffs with different distribution companies and switch to another supplier with one click of the mouse, as if it were a cellular operator. The problem is not even that by 2016 nothing like this happened. We just move in the opposite direction.
Interesting fact
In 2013, a St. Petersburg businessman, Grigory Khibovsky, made several shots at the office of the State Unitary Enterprise “Lensvet”, after which he committed suicide. Desperately driven to despair, Khibovsky left a detailed description of the facts of corruption in organizations under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Engineering Support of St. Petersburg. However, even such a radical way of paying attention to the problems did not help: none of the defendants in Khibovsky's letter became an accused in criminal cases.
Master Fetishchev's visa
A resident of the Lower Oselkov one click of a mouse can only pay for electricity. Unless, of course, he did not turn off the Internet along with the light. Everything else from the start is deliberately overwhelming.
Petersburg, Irina, buying a house in Oselki, could not imagine that it might not be connected to the electricity grid - after all, almost Peter, 15 km before Kad. It turned out that the bulbs were burning because the house was illegally powered from neighbors. Although there was a branch along the border of the site, the local Lenenergo stubbornly asserted that there were no facilities at the substation. And the neighbors for some reason they have?
“So we lived for five years, but in 2009, Lenenergo announced an“ amnesty, ”says Irina. - That is, we can recognize that we took energy from our neighbors and nothing will happen for us. Let's go to Pushkin, have been looking for the street, which is not even on the map. An employee of this mysterious office showed us a block diagram on four pages - these are the steps of approvals that were to be completed. And then she gave business cards to people who could help for 200 thousand rubles. True, in the regional Lenenergo in Sertolovo we were reassured: if we do it ourselves, 50 thousands will be released. We were treated favorably, because we agreed to work with the company of the sons of one of the Sertol managers - they set up a pillar for us. But still, I had to go from St. Petersburg to Sertolovo 20 – 25 once, and the entire barrel organ lasted for six months. Among the countless approvals, a master Fetishchev’s visa was required at the Rosseti branch office in Garbolovo. And he has no visiting hours at all. I was only told that he would be at a gas station in Vaskelovo in 15 minutes. I rushed to the wild speed: I see, the special vehicle is already driving off the gas station. I interrupted - blocked the exit of the entire gas station, Fetishchev signed without looking. Later, I had a dream: I was flying to Greece for a holiday, and the border guard looks at my passport and suddenly throws it in my face: “How dare you ?! And where is the master Fetishchev's visa? ”
There is no legal alternative to this quest. Even if you want to install some wind turbine in your territory, it is even more difficult to register it. And this is not only the whim of Sertolovsk power engineers - according to such rules all Russia lives for some reason. In some places they are even much tougher. There are cases when ordinary residents who pay their bills on time have turned off the light for some intermediary’s debts. And sometimes the shutdown of the enterprise from electricity looks like a component of a raider attack.
The authorities do not notice all this? By no means! In December, the 2011 of Vladimir Putin, right on the Day of the Power Engineer, arranged a grand dressing, which caused eight loud resignations the very next day. In particular, the national leader said: “Of all the 352 people tested by the executive staff of the energy complex at 169 officials - almost every second - has affiliation with 385 commercial organizations, except, of course, for those where they already work. It is far from isolated cases when the energy complexes of entire regions of the Russian Federation are controlled simply by family clans ... Well, absolutely go crazy already! Sorry, just no other words ... "
According to Putin, the energy system of the North Caucasus region is controlled by Mr. Kaitov’s family. Consumers pay for the energy supplied to the accounts of affiliated firms that act as an agent for energy supply companies. One of the managers of the Urals branch of JSC FGC UES, Nikitin, also established five companies related to the repair and maintenance of local energy facilities. For several years, the state-owned RusHydro has been providing multibillion-dollar loans and buying interest-free bills of exchange from some offshore company located in Cyprus. In the Central Federal District, there is a scheme for the withdrawal of energy from offshores - as much as 25 billion rubles have surpassed. Vladimir Vladimirovich called dozens of names and organizations that evening, and no one subsequently sued him for libel.
On the other hand, we did not see any high-profile criminal cases: the cleaning of the industry was limited to resignations, which did not change much. According to the director of the Russian Center for Transparency International Elena Panfilova, no systematic legislative work to prevent such situations.because the authorities are afraid of such precise regulation as fire. In the course of a one-time campaign, you can dismiss anyone who wants to, but not touch their own.
Nobody touched the former top managers of RAO UES, which today appear on the Forbes list. For example, Mikhail Abyzov, Deputy Chubais in Finance, took 2012 in the 76 ranking with a fortune of 1,2 billion dollars. Its main asset was the group of companies RU-COM, which included in 2007 the engineering, construction and energy divisions of the abolished RAO UES. And three years ago, Abyzov became a “minister without a portfolio” - advisor to the president of the Russian Federation on work with the “Open Government”.
And the latest high-profile cases against power engineers give out more like a fight between bulldogs under the carpet than a systemic fight against corruption. In August, 2015 in Murmansk put energy magnate Gennady Shubin, who was close to the previous governor, on 12 for years, and was not about to give up their positions. And in Tver for the second year, the owners of power grid assets Oleg Shadrin, Sergey Konchenkov and Artyom Potekhin are in jail. It is significant that the case was initiated by a local monopolist, and the FSB was involved in its investigation.
Usually, the real fight against corruption has different results. As a result of genuine ordering, tariffs, which experts admit to almost half-blown, would have collapsed. Connecting a private house to networks would be made, as in neighboring Finland, by electronic application and would cost 100 euros. The websites of market participants would timely publish the budget and other financial indicators. And the leaders of the state segment of the industry announced information about the business of family members, as if the most ordinary deputies of the State Duma.
Not in the horse world
According to the Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2014, in terms of power generation, Russia shared 4 – 5 ranks with Japan, behind the United States, China and India.
Russia produced 1,064 kWh, which is twice as large as France and four times smaller than the United States. In terms of per capita output, we are at the same level as Germany and Denmark. And although we did not reach our own level of 1990 (1,082 GW · h), Russia could be called an energy-safe country, if not for the situation with the "loss" of electricity and the inaccessibility of many areas.
At the same time, resource-saving forms of energy production are poorly used in Russia. In the 21st century, only two new hydropower plants were commissioned - Bureyskaya and Boguchanskaya. And the latter began to build more under the USSR. Although Russia has a huge potential of sea and ocean bays with tidal heights in 10 meters, tidal power stations have not developed. The powerful Mezenskaya and Penzhinsk TPPs have been in the design stage since the Brezhnev era, although the construction of each of them would lead to annual fuel savings of 12,6 mln tonnes of “equivalent fuel” and prevent the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Of the 56 geothermal deposits, only 20 is used. And the economic potential of wind energy is about 260 billion kWh per year - that is, about 30% of the production of all power plants in Russia.
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