Alstom and KER establish Joint Venture for HVDC projects in Russia

Alstom Grid and KER Group have announced a 50/50 joint venture agreement to implement High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) projects in Russia. The enterprise will offer design and project management services for complex HVDC projects to address the demand for reliable power supply and the implementation of advanced Super Grid technologies. Alstom Grid Vice-President, Gerhard Seyrling and President of KER Group Igor Lukashenko made the announcement today in St. Petersburg.

The Joint Venture Company will support the development of the Russian HVDC and Supergrid market, which is worth approximately 2.5 billion over the next seven years. It provides localised HVDC expertise and engineering in Russia through an Alstom-KER Engineering Centre based in St. Petersburg. Together, Alstom and KER will participate in local tenders such as the Leningrad NPP - Vyborg project, currently under finalisation, which will link Russia and Finland via an HVDC interconnection.

"Russia is stepping up the speedy modernisation of its power transmission infrastructure and as such, is a strategically important market for Alstom Grid," said Gerhard Seyrling, Alstom Grid. "Today, we have achieved our initial goal of creating a major HVDC engineering centre in Russia and our team ready to provide state-of-the-art HVDC solutions."

"Modernisation of the Russian power sector is a complex and multidisciplinary task. Separate efforts to implement projects of such scale without pooling resources of home and foreign special purpose vehicles are doomed to failure," says Igor Lukashenko, President of KER Group of companies (Russia). "Our own experience and analysis of foreign practices and, in the first instance, China, where more than 15 HVDC projects have been built over the last 10 years, shows the evidence of economic feasibility of transfer of advanced European technologies for the design and manufacture of DC transmissions to customer countries. This is why our company has approached our French counterparts with a proposal to set up an engineering center."

Direct current transmission technology (HVDC) is a high-tech, low-cost, reliable and controllable power transport tool. HVDC technology will support the modernisation of the Russia electricity sector by adding long distance transmission interconnections that increase grid stability, reliability and efficiency. Today, many countries operate more than 120 DC systems and dozens of these facilities are yet to be erected. Global practice shows that HVDC systems are essential for effective power export development. HVDC dramatically enhances stability, reliability and performance of grids and minimises energy transport losses. Until recently, this technology has virtually not been used in Russia.

Alstom Grid is a pioneer in the fields of HVDC and the Supergrid. Its technology is being used for Ningdong-Shandong, the highest rated 660 kV interconnection in China, the Rio Madeira project in Brazil, the longest HVDC energy system in the world and Champa-Kurukshetra in India, a turnkey HVDC solution for an 800 kV link.

The Memorandum of co-operation between ALSTOM Holdings (France) and Complex Energy Solutions LLC (part of KER Group of companies, Russia) was signed at the Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 16, 2011. In November the same year, the parties agreed to set up joint venture "Alstom-KER Engineering Technology Center" and over one year, the company prepared the material and technical base, as well as specialised training for the new teams. As of today, the joint venture is now fully established.

About Alstom
Alstom is a global leader in the world of power generation, power transmission and rail infrastructure and sets the benchmark for innovative and environmentally friendly technologies. Alstom builds the fastest train and the highest capacity automated metro in the world, provides turnkey integrated power plant solutions and associated services for a wide variety of energy sources, including hydro, nuclear, gas, coal and wind, and it offers a wide range of solutions for power transmission, with a focus on smart grids. The Group employs 92,000 people in around 100 countries. It had sales of 20 billion and booked close to 22 billion in orders in 2011/12.

Alstom Grid has over 100 years of expertise in electrical grids. Whether for utilities or electro-intensive industries or facilitating the trading of energy, Alstom Grid brings power to its customers' projects. Alstom Grid ranks among the top 3 in electrical transmission sector with an annual sales turnover of more than 4 billion. It has 20,000 employees and over 90 manufacturing and engineering sites worldwide. At the heart of the development of Smart Grid, Alstom Grid offers products, services and integrated energy management solutions across the full energy value chainfrom power generation, through transmission and distribution grids and to the large end user.

Alstom has been present in Russia for more than 35 years. The Group already has several Joint Ventures will leading Russian companies including Transmashholding, Rosatom, RusHydro, Rusal Inter RAO and Soyuz.

KER Group of companies is a multidisciplinary full-cycle engineering and construction group that implements comprehensive projects in power industry and heat supply. The Group comprises six enterprises and is one of the largest construction associations of the Russian power complex.
Company's assets include more than 40 technologically complex and innovative projects ranging from power supply to islands (Valaam, Kizhi, Solovetsky Archipelago) to turnkey construction and reconstruction of power, heat supply facilities and backbone networks. The total cost of the projects implemented by KER Group of companies over the recent 5 years exceeds 30 bln roubles.

Further information:

The "Leningradskaya NPP-2 Vyborgskaya DC transmission line" project is implemented to the benefit of the branch of UES FGC JSC North-West BPS. There is only one way to arrange power transmission from LNPP-2 to Finland via the Gulf of Finland (the shortest distance) DC power transmission. The project provides for construction of two special-purpose substations as well as DC aerial and cable lines. For the first time in Russia, a submarine cable line 41 km long will be laid at the bottom of the Gulf of Finland. Currently, equipment for DC aerial lines is not manufactured in Russia and it is designed from scratch. The total length of the new line will exceed 100 km, transmission capacity 1,000 mW with a voltage of ±300 kV and a current of 1,700 A.

Further recent DC projects in Russia:
DC link at Mogocha and Hani substations: The project is required to interconnect the Eastern and Siberian power grids and connect them to the Russia's united power grid.
DC link at Mamonovo substation as a part of the power distribution scheme (PDS) of the Kaliningrad NPP: Project to create a channel to export excessive energy resources of the Baltic NPP under construction. Poland intends to use this line to import up to 8% of the total volume of power consumed.
Interstate DC links at borders with Norway.

Press contacts:

Alstom
Ekaterina Dobrogorskaya (Russia) Tel +7 916 982 4517; ekaterina.dobrogorskaya@crn.alstom.com

Website www.alstom.com; www.alstom.com/grid

KER
Galina Chernetskaya (KER) Tel +7(812) 309 3638, mobile : +7 981 760 4241
chernetskaya.ga@c-es.org