Former Fuel and Energy Minister Oleksii Sheberstov, the head of the Energy Consulting Group, has assessed as formal the work of the Ukrhidroenerho power generating company on the completion of the Dnister pumped storage power plant in Novodnistrovsk, Chernivtsi region.
He gave his opinion in an interview with the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia weekly.
According to Sheberstov, Ukrhidroenerho is misleading the government and President Viktor Yuschenko, while hoping to make a formal report about the completion of the Dnister pumped storage power plant.
"...bureaucrats responsible for the construction at the Fuel and Energy Ministry and Ukrhidroenerho are trying in the 'best traditions' of the Soviet era to report about the completion of the works by the scheduled date (December 31, 2008), and they are resorting to various tricks," he said.
In particular, it has been announced that the first unit will be commissioned by the end of 2008, but in the regime of synchronous capacitor.
Sheberstov assesses this approach of the Fuel and Energy Ministry and the company toward the construction of the unit as technically pointless.
"This will boost the funding of the first unit of the Dnister pumped storage power plant in future and delay the commissioning of units two and three, as the scheduled current works at the units will be more complicated. Moreover, this will boost the budget of the project, which has already topped all norms," he said.
Sheberstov said the calendar construction plan of the Dnister pumped storage power plant was not being executed on most of positions.
"As for generator shaft, interleaving of the rotor of the generator, and assembly of the turbine, the delay is 1.5-2 months. As for the motor-generator, about 50% of segments of the stator (are at a plant). The delay is about 3 months," he said.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the National Electricity Regulation Commission late in May increased an average annual (i.e. dual-rate) electricity tariff for the Ukrhidroenerho power generating company by 3.58 times or 3.82 kopecks to 5.3 kopecks per kilowatt-hour for the June-December period of 2008, as the company has to complete the Dnister pumped storage power plant.
The Fuel and Energy Ministry estimates a construction of the first hydraulic unit at the Dnister pumped storage power plant at UAH 945.8 million.
The uncompleted complex of the plant consists of three hydraulic units with the design capacity of 350 megawatt each.
Seven hydraulic units with a total capacity of 2450 megawatt are planned to be constructed at the Dnister pumped storage power plant.
On January 16, the Fuel and Energy Ministry transferred functions of the requester of the Dnister PSP construction from the Dnistrovska PSP company to the Ukrhidroenerho company.
As of January 1, the budget of the completion of the first stage of the Dnister pumped storage power plant (consisting of three hydraulic units with a total design capacity of 1,263 megawatt) was estimated at UAH 2.7 billion.
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