"There are good areas. As for Kazakhstan, we have increased supplies by 20% compared to last year. As for Kyrgyzstan, which was not present in the first quarter of the previous year, we also had no deliveries [there in 2024]. As for Mongolia, which is beating the record of records in the first quarter at the moment ... [we] probably [supplied] twice as much," Inter RAO management board member Alexandra Panina told journalists on the sidelines of the ATOMEXPO-2024 International Forum in the Russian resort city of Sochi.
At the same time, Russia's electricity exports to China decreased by 75% in January-February year-on-year, Panina said, adding that "this is the most unfavorable factor that was registered in the first quarter" and that such a situation "may prevail over a long period of time."
Several factors account for the decrease of year-on-year electricity exports in the first three months of 2024, which are expected to reach 2.1 billion kilowatts per hour, Panina said.
To resume supplies through the Amur-Heihe transmission line from Russia to China, which have been stopped since November 2023, the volume of power supplies through the need needs to reach at least 75 megawatts, but such free volumes of electricity are not currently available for export, she explained.
The decline in Russia's export supplies to China is also due to an increase in domestic electricity consumption in Russia's Far East and to a high accident rate, Panina stated.
"Based on the results of the first quarter, we expect the volume of supplies to be approximately 2.1 billion kWh per hour, perhaps a little more," the Inter RAO management board member concluded, adding that the figure was "higher than predicted in the business plan, but lower than for the same period last year."
ATOMEXPO is the largest international forum on nuclear energy devoted to the current state of the global nuclear industry and trends for its further development.