OREANDA-NEWS. On 18 June 2008 was announced, that the meeting seminar took place within the limits of the "Electro-2008" Exhibition in the Expocentre, Krasnaya Presnya. Its organizers were IDGC of Centre, JSC; Expocentre, JSC, and Energo-Info magazine.

The heads, engineers, designers and sales managers of the enterprises - manufacturers and suppliers of the electric technical equipment took part in the meeting.

The program stipulates reports of technical directors and leading experts of IDGC of Centre and its branches. The reporters will tell about the main requirements to the principle kinds of the equipment used in the grids. These are switching devices, power and measuring transformers, devices of relay protection and automatics, cable and conductor products, etc.

'At this meeting we aspired to inform manufacturers on those requirements in operation of the power equipment which we develop already now and plan to use in the near future,' Sergey Shumakher, deputy general director for the technical policy of IDGC of Centre said. 'During the discussion, we have received reasoned arguments from suppliers which we shall use at formation of further technical policy of IDGC.'

In his address to participants of the seminar, General Director of IDGC of Centre Evgeniy Makarov noted that during the reform the electric power industry as a whole, and electric grid business in particular, received an enormous, unprecedented impulse as for the scale of development. Over 1.3 bn rubles will be directed to development of the grid infrastructure up to 2011. The total volume of the investment program of IDGC of Centre for the period of 2008-2012 will exceed 45 billion rubles. Up to 2010, the company plans commissioning of transformer capacity in the amount of nearby 3,000 MVA, construction of over 11, 460 km of transmission lines. Thus IDGC of Centre should create the reserve of electric capacities in the volume advancing development of the economy for 3-5 years.

‘The scales of investment programs and problems the power men face stipulate that the manufacturers should go ahead and offer the newest development, rather than lag behind,' Evgeniy Makarov said. 'Therefore, during such meetings like this one, the meeting seminar "Innovations are the basis of development and reliability improvement of the distribution grid complex of IDGC of Centre", we aspire to establish active bilateral dialogue between the company and manufacturers. As a result of such a forum, manufacturers of the equipment can understand how IDGC of Centre develops and other IDGC on its example, what equipment will be demanded by the grid complex of Russia in several years and in the long term".

Technical heads, experts of IDGC of Centre and branches presented reports in the most important directions of the company technical policy realization, use of this or that equipment: 'Power and measuring transformers', 'Switching devices', 'Devices of relay protection and automatics', 'Innovations and research and development', etc.

'Initiative of IDGC to hold such an action is very unusual: for the first time such a large network company invited with the purpose to express the desire to and requirements to use this or that equipment, and the most important is to feel the feedback from suppliers,' Deputy Director for Marketing of the Taurida Electric company Vladislav Vorotnitsky said. 'For us as manufacturers of the electric equipment, it is very important to understand these requirements, to correlate them to our decisions so that finally the decisions be optimum and satisfy consumers'.