OREANDA-NEWS. January 28, 2010. The Russia's largest private power company OAO EuroSibEnergo has completed the implementation of its plan for generating facilities to enter the Wholesale Electricity (Capacity) Market (WECM).

EuroSibEnergo's Avtozavodskaya CHP (located in Nizhny Novgorod) entered the wholesale market on 1 January 2010 after the WECM participant status was awarded to it by the electricity market regulator NP Market Council in the end of December 2009.

Avtozavodskaya CHP's installed capacity is 580 MW; the annual production is about 2.5bn kWh.

Avtozavodskaya CHP is the EuroSibEnergo's only power plant located in the first price zone of the electricity market.

Krasnoyarsk HPP entered the wholesale market even earlier, on 1 January 2010; OAO IrkutskEnergo's generating facilities joined the wholesale market before 2005.

"EuroSibEnergo's full-scale activities at the wholesale market will improve its financial performance and will help it take advantage of the on-going electricity market liberalization", said En+ Group Managing Director (Power Business) Alexander Sergeev. The extra income from the Avtozavodskaya CHP's activities at the WECM will be used to modernize the plant.

The same status of a WECM participant was simultaneously granted to the EuroSibEnergo's sales company OAO VolgaEnergoSbyt, which is a "guaranteeing" electricity supplier of the Nizhny Novgorod region. This new status gives VolgaEnergoSbyt the potential to keep down electricity tariffs for individual and industrial consumers of the Nizhny Novgorod region.