National regulation and standards development for Russian power system operation and control

Abstract:
The specifics of the regulatory framework for technological activity in the power industry of Russia are mainly caused by the technical regulation reform and the power industry structure changes. The complexity is determined by such factors as: the variety of independent companies that appeared during power industry unbundling, the need to adapt regulatory technical background to up-to-date conditions and legislative framework, lack of institutional support and weak consolidation of power industry subjects in relation to the system of technical regulation, insufficiency of authorities of the Ministry of energy, the problem of integration of new technologies and foreign facilities into the existing power infrastructure. One of the most important tasks for the national power industry is the need to form holistic technical regulatory framework aimed at securing the system reliability of the United Power System (UPS) of Russia. Challenges in the development of technical regulatory framework for operation and planning of the UPS of Russia are dealt with in the paper. Standardization presents an integral part of technical regulation framework. National technical committee for standardization TC 016 “Power industry” has been recently reformed by the national standardization body with the support of the Ministry of energy and some important subjects in power industry. TC 016 is now based on the System operator of the United power system of Russia (SO UPS, JSC) and integrates main stakeholders in the domain of power systems, transmission and distribution networks, thermal power plants, hydro power plants, distributed generation and renewables. The paper discusses a possible configuration of technical regulation in the power industry that combines both regulatory documents and national standards for system aspects of operation of power facilities within the grid. This can help to reconsider the existing practice according to the Russian legislation and power industry structure and take into account the best practice of technical regulation in leading countries of the European Union and North America as well as the practice of international organizations for standardization as ISO and IEC.