OREANDA-NEWS. January 13, 2010. Bratsk HPP registered its trillionth kilowatt-hour at about 5.00 am today. One trillion kilowatt-hours is an absolute record in Russia and Eurasia and is enough to cover the power demand of all Russian consumers during one year.

With a capacity of 4,500 WM, Bratsk HPP produces up to 30bn kWh per year. The plant's construction lasted 13 years from 1954 to 1967. Apart from the professional HPP builders, thousands of young people went to Siberia under the aegis of the KOMSOMOL Young Communist League to help build what would be the world's largest hydropower plant as of the commissioning date.

The cheap and environmentally-friendly generation of Bratsk HPP made Irkutsk a strong industrial centre with the Bratsk Aluminium Smelter, wood industry, petrochemistry, aviation and other enterprises. The citizens of the Irkutsk region have enjoyed the Russia's lowest energy tariffs thanks to the efficient operations of Bratsk HPP and the management strategy of IrkutskEnergo.

Bratsk HPP will be reborn in the near future after a large-scale modernization programme currently under way. Six new wheels have been already installed to provide a further increase in the output. The investments of OAO IrkutskEnergo into this project alone have totaled over half a billion Russian roubles.

OAO IrkutskEnergo CEO Sergey Emdin commented: "The one trillion kilowatt-hours at Bratsk HPP is an important milestone for the company - and for Russia and the global power industry, as well".