OREANDA-NEWS. A delegation from the Federal Grid Company of the Unified Energy System of Russia (FGC UES) JSC headed by Oleg Budargin (Chairman of Management Board) visited the construction site of the plant belonging to the joint venture of Power Machines OJSC and Toshiba Corporation in Kolpino district of St. Petersburg. The meeting was attended by Roman Berdnikov (First Deputy CEO for Technical Policy of Russian Grids JSC), Pavel Korsunov (CEO of FGC UES Research and Development Centre JSC) and Andrei Pishchikov (CEO of the joint venture).

The plant representatives told about the construction progress and discussed cooperation issues. The transformer plant is to be started up in 2013 and the series production is to be launched starting from 2014. The plant main production will comprise 110-750 kV power transformers and autotransformers with capacity over 25 MVA, including three-phase versions, as well as 500-750 kV shunt reactors. The Federal Grid Company is supposed to be one of the main purchasers of new domestic power equipment.

Oleg Budargin highly appreciated the pace and quality of the plant construction and expressed confidence that the enterprise will be built in time. “To the domestic electric power industry it’s extremely important to have a reliable supplier of state-of-the-art Russian-made transformers. The integrated power grid now faces a very acute problem of modernization and, when working on the fixed assets upgrade, it’s essential to place the bet on the Russian manufacturer. By the way, our dialogue with foreign colleagues during a round table within the framework of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum will be dedicated to the issue of modernization,” said the head of the Federal Grid Company.

During the meeting it was pointed out that the Russian electric power engineers interlink the program for the industry upgrade with the development of domestic production of power equipment. “It matters to us that high quality products will now be produced in Saint Petersburg. Toshiba transferred the most advanced technologies to the Russian party for purposes of the joint venture establishment. And now we have to pay special attention to the training of highly qualified personnel to work on the new equipment,” said Oleg Budargin.

At present the company’s production and testing facility is being fitted out with production equipment which is being supplied and installed, the finishing of administrative buildings interior and preparation of engineering services are coming to an end, and the recruitment of technical, engineering and administrative personnel is being carried out as well as.

The Toshiba Corporation and Power Machines OSJC are one of the key partners of FGC UES JSC. In the end of April Oleg Budargin held a meeting with Norio Sasaki (President of the Japanese company), during which the parties discussed prospects of their cooperation for the modernization of the Russian integrated power grid.