OREANDA-NEWS. This was said about at a presentation of the project at the II International Innovation Forum UPGRID 2013 "Power Grid. Innovation. Development" by First Deputy General Director for Technical Policy of "Russian Grids" Roman Berdnikov: "The test centre will be provided with all necessary equipment and is primarily targeted at the high-voltage test equipment. In fact, today's existing centres in Russia do not test electrical equipment above 110 kV. Start of the Centre operation is planned by the end of 2017." Roman Berdnikov also added that the estimated cost for the design and construction of the centre will reach 12.7 billion rubles.

The signing of a cooperation agreement of "Russian Grids" and SC "Vnesheconombank" on the joint project of the Federal Test Centre opened the business program of the Forum. The main purpose of the Agreement is to establish a strategic partnership, to develop long-term and effective cooperation between the companies in the implementation of the investment project to create the federal testing centre in Russia. It is planned that "Vnesheconombank" will allocate 70% of funds for construction of the centre through preferential lending.

Roman Berdnikov stressed that the main task of the centre is to support domestic manufacturers. Answering journalists' questions, he also said that the construction of the centre will be a profitable investment project due to its uniqueness and relevance. "It is planned to perform in the new test centre the list of qualifying tests of new and developed equipment according to all the required national and international standards," underlined First Deputy General Director for Technical Policy of "Russian Grids". Equipping of the centre will also allow conducting the development of test procedures, standards and guidelines, testing and verification of calculation methods and check testing of equipment after failures and outages.

After signing the agreement Deputy Head of SC "Vnesheconombank" Anatoly Ballo stressed: "The construction of the test centre will create the conditions in which Russian products will be actively implemented in the power grid complex. We hope that this project will contribute to the development of the export potential of the industry."

The appearance of the test centre in Russia, first of all, will have a beneficial effect on the level of energy security of the country, will help improve the reliability of the power system and increase the competitiveness of Russian producers at the domestic and international level.

According to Roman Berdnikov, the future centre will be located in St. Petersburg. The deciding factors were the availability of the necessary infrastructure and logistic issues of delivery of equipment to be tested, the availability of competent personnel in the region and land resources.

The creation of the federal testing centre in Russia will improve the efficiency of the entire power grid facilities, will reduce the share of imports in the procurement of equipment and the development of competition in the electrical equipment market and, last but not least, will become a barrier hindering the penetration into the Russian market of poor quality electrical products.