Wholesale Market of Electricity and Power as Result of Rao Ues Reform (On the Example of Altai Krai)

Abstract

The article examines the specific structures and mechanisms of power supply to consumers that have developed as a result of the so-called market transformations of RAO UES of Russia. Reforms, conceived as market reforms, in fact, ended up as a conglomeration of administrative and bureaucratic structures and certain principles, rules and procedures that vaguely resemble market relations. In fact, the transformation of the electric power industry was forced to take into account the anti-market nature of its functioning: first, technological (specificity of the product and the industry); second, organizational and administrative, requiring a special organization, which is fundamentally different from the traditional market for goods and services. Therefore, the transformation of the electric power industry, carried out by the method of trial and error, has gone through a rather difficult path of registration, re-registration, change of the legal status of market participants. Almost all the processes of buying and selling electricity and capacity are surrounded by numerous rules, restrictions, institutions that have nothing to do with the market. This concerns the choice of counterparties, electricity payment processes and especially capacity, when the consumer pays in advance for the goods that were not actually purchased from the supplier.