How can Russia deal with emergency power outages

Sergey Kondratiev, Principal Director on Economic Studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to the InfoTEK news agency on the power outages in the South of Russia.

According to him, it is almost impossible to prepare the power system in such a way as to avoid such large–scale outages.

"In this case, it is important not only how many consumers have lost access to electricity, but how quickly it is possible to restore electricity supply. Each major shutdown is unique in its own way, but if it can be done for 70-80% within 12-24 hours after the start of repair work, this is an excellent result," the analyst said.

According to Sergey Kondratiev, the reliability of power systems can also be improved through redundancy, but this is expensive and means a noticeable increase in electricity transmission tariffs to finance the construction of the necessary infrastructure.