Joint session of Armenia, Iran, Georgia energy authorities and PJSC Russian Grids discussed regional electric power project in Yerevan

ArmInfo. Joint session of Armenia, Iran, Georgia's energy authorities and Russian Networks was held today in Yerevan for discussing regional electric power project.

According to the official statement of the Armenia's Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources taking into account favorable conditions of development of new regional projects, the meeting participants discussed opportunities of enlargement of cooperation in electric power sector. The question is about such regional projects, which will give opportunity to unite electric energy systems of the four countries, increasing by this the quality of management of power exchange as well as the security, efficiency, and reliability of electric energy systems work in general. The statement notes that among favorable conditions for implementation of this project are on the one hand that Armenia's electric energy system already works in parallel synchronized regime with Iran, and Georgia's system works with Russian one and on the other hand a number of investment projects are being implemented or planned, which will let to increase transmitting capacity of the region's electric energy systems.

Particularly, a power transmission line between Armenia and Georgia with a capacity of 400-500KW will be put to exploitation till 2018.  As a result parallel work with Georgia's electricity system in asynchronous running and ensuring of power exchange of 350MW will become possible in the first stage, which will increase to 700 MW till 2021. In the end of 2018 400 KW transmission line between Armenia and Iran is planned to put into exploitation, which will increase the electricity exchange between the two countries to 1200MW. The aim of implementation of these projects is creating South-North corridor that will allow working with the electric energy systems of EEC and EU, which also assist to these projects.

As Armenia's Energy Minster Yervand Zakharyan stated the system will provide opportunity to use parallel work of the systems in any emergency situations. He informed that in the framework of today's session a coordination-working group will be established in order to create legal and normative base for organization of parallel synchronized work of the region's electric power systems till 2018.  He informed about an agreement to organize the next meeting in April 2016 for preparation of concrete projects.  Director General of PJSC Russian Grids Oleg Budargin in his turn noted that due to modern technologies the four countries can discuss integration of systems and this is more than a construction of a concrete line. In this context he noted that the region has big prospects not only from the point of view of this technological project but also from its economic integration perspective, taking into account Iran's huge potential and exclusively beneficial and interesting position of Armenia's energy system. He hailed the establishment of four side working group noting that such a group already works and coordinates Russia and Iran's work. "This will be a good fundament for the new regional project to which Armenia and Georgia will join", he emphasized.