OREANDA-NEWS  On 28 October was announced, that the power plants of IES-Holding (comprising generating facilities of TGK-5, TGK-6, TGK-7 and TGK-9) produced 48,673 million kW/h of power in the first nine months of 2008, a 6.7% gain year-on-year.

According to an analytical study of IES-Holding's Trading Division in charge of IES's unified strategy in the Russian electric power and capacity wholesale market, this increase in production is due to a number of objective reasons, including consumption growth and system factors. Also contributing to the higher performance were effective operations of the Holding Company in the electric power wholesale market, which ensured an optimal balance of the power plants' loads and the power demand, as well as commissioning of new generating capacity.

As the Trading Division reports, the first nine months of 2008 witnessed a general increase in power consumption in the European Part of Russia and the Urals by 4.1% against the same period last year. A contributing factor of this growth was a higher consumption by processing industries, which grew by 7.6%.

Besides, due to a lack of water used in power production by hydropower plants, IES-Holding's thermal plants saw their loads grow. In the second quarter of the year during the spring flood-time, water inflow in most water reservoirs of the Volga-Kama chain of hydropower plants fell short of the average long-term annual figure by 15-45%. The total water inflow in the water reservoirs of the Volga-Kama chain was 131 cubic kilometers with the long-term annual average being 161 cubic kilometers.

During the winter months, a number of IES's plants were loaded by the System Operator up to their installed capacity, while Solnechnogorsk HPP and Vorkuta HPP-2 (Generation Urals Division, comprising the generating facilities of TGK-5 and TGK-9) increased their production by 180 million kW/h of load required to maintain frequency in the isolated system of the Republic of Komi.

An important growth factor for Generation Urals' output was the commissioning of 35 MW of new capacity at Perm HPP-14 last summer. This project to develop HPP-14's capacity implemented under IES-Holding's investment program boasts unique engineering solutions. The plant refurnished its R-50 backpressure turbine and installed a coupled Т-35/55 turbine thus boosting the plant's operating capacity by 85 MW.

There were other factors contributing to IES' plants output growth, such as increased duration and number of outages of backbone power transmission lines as well as a temporary shutdown of a unit of Surgut SDPP-2 at the beginning of the year.