The Russian electricity sector requires a colossal injection of funds in the next decade to repair and modernize dangerously outdated equipment, auditors said.
The auditing company KPMG said investment of $550 billion would be required. But this sum would not be enough to purchase new equipment, Yekaterina Tripoten from Sovlink, an independent financial consulting company, told the Russian online edition Gazeta.ru.
"The age of our equipment is nearing 50 years on average," Alexander Seleznev from the Uralsib Financial Corporation said.
The capacities of the country's current electricity monopoly, the Unified National Electric Grid, are semi-dilapidated across the country, Gazeta.ru said, adding that 80% of hydroelectric power facilities and 60%-70% of thermal energy capacities are in need of maintenance.
An accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant on Siberia's Yenisei River last August killed 75 people and destroyed a turbine hall. The accident also destroyed three hydropower units and damaged the remaining seven.
Tripoten said Russia's largest state-run power companies could invest just 5.250 trillion rubles ($174 bln). She expressed doubt that private power generators, which have been economizing amid the economic crisis, could contribute the remaining two thirds of investment by 2020.
The sum named by KPMG is much more than the country's former chief energy official Anatoly Chubais predicted in his boldest forecasts. According to Gazeta.ru, Chubais earlier said the sector would require $420 billion from 2008 through 2020.
MOSCOW, January 26 (RIA Novosti)
