Joint Russian/American Study on Legal/Regulatory, Market, Consumer and Human Resource Impediments to Smart Grid Technology
The Russian Energy Agency (REA) and the United States Energy Association (USEA) conducted in Moscow a series of interviews with the a diverse group of Russian smart grid stakeholders from March 9 through 16, 2012 to collect information for the “Joint Russian/American Study on Legal/Regulatory, Market, Consumer and Technical Impediments to Smart Grid Technology Deployment.”
The study is conducted as part of the Bilateral Presidential Commission Energy Efficiency Working Group’s Russian/American Smart Grid Partnership, which was established in December 2010 by the USEA and the REA under a Memorandum of Understanding executed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Russian Energy Agency (REA).
The study will discuss the benefits of smart grid technology deployment and the regulatory, market, commercial, and customer related factors that may influence realization of its benefits in the United States and Russia. The Russian study team is led by the REA with technical support from the Russian Energy Forecasting Agency’s (EFA) representatives Irina Volkova and Alexey Vigura and from the Federal Grid Company. The EFA is responsible for developing electricity balance forecasts for the Ministry of Energy.
The American Study team is led by USEA with technical support from the Horizon Energy Group (HEG). HEG is working with leading U.S. utilities to develop and deploy smart grid technology and advises municipalities and universities on developing micro-grid solutions to improve system efficiency and reliability.
To run the interviews a customized questionnaire developed by the joint Russian/American expert consulting team during a workshop conducted in Moscow from February 13-16, 2012 for each stakeholder was used.
Interviews were conducted with the following organizations: representatives from the Council of the Russian Federation, State Duma, Ministry of Energy, state executive authorities, infrastructural organizations of Russian power industry, largest generators, distributors and sellers, heads of academic institutions and industrial enterprises.
The REA and each of the stakeholders exhibited a keen interest in the U.S. smart grid programs.
The next activity under the study framework is to conduct the parallel set of interviews with U.S. smart grid stakeholders from April 3-14. Based on the information collected during the interviews and independent research by the Russian and American experts, the study will be prepared by September 2012. A one day workshop to discuss the findings with the stakeholders will be conducted in Moscow in September 2012.
Source: Study draft report