China wants to, but the Far East can't: electricity supplies have collapsed

In the first half of the year, Russian electricity exports to China fell sharply. The Far East cannot even deliver the agreed volumes.

In the first half of 2024, Russia reduced the supply of electricity to China by 76% - up to 465 million kWh. This is reported by Kommersant with reference to Chinese customs data.

"The total cost of delivered electricity fell by 75% to $21.5 million. The average cost of supplying 1 kWh is about $ 0.046,"the newspaper writes. According to his calculations, while maintaining the current trend, the total volume of exports to China will not exceed 1 billion kWh by the end of the year, which will be a record low in history. Whereas over the past decade, deliveries averaged 3 billion kWh per year, and in 2022 — 4.7 billion kWh.

In the Far East, there is still a shortage of energy capacity due to low water availability and repairs of thermal generation amid rising consumption, Inter RAO, which is the only exporter of electricity in the Russian Federation, explained. Russia.

"Since the decrease in volumes was expected, this made it possible not to conclude a take-or-pay agreement," the energy company told Kommersant.

Despite the fact that China is ready to buy large amounts of electricity in In Russia, there has long been a structural shortage of electricity and power capacity in the Far East, explained Sergey Rozhenko from Kept. The expert does not expect an increase in supplies, as demand in the region is growing at a faster pace — by 25% over the past ten years. Sergey Rozhenko proposes to get out of the situation by deploying temporary mobile generation, in particular, on the basis of gas piston units or gas turbines in container design.