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On December 11−13, 2019, the Areal Congress Hotel located near Moscow hosted the Wholesale Electric Power and Capacity Market of Russia: Practice and Prospects Forum arranged by BigpowerNews news agency and the Training Centre of Non-profit Partnership "Market Council" with the support from the Council of Power Producers, Association NP GS & PC, Power Consumers Association, and Non-profit Partnership "Market Council".

The forum’s business program started with a plenary session, where the power industry leaders spoke: Andrey Maksimov, Deputy Director of the Electric Power Development Department of the Ministry of Energy of Russia, Oleg Barkin, Member of the Management Board / Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Non-profit Partnership "Market Council", Mikhail Andronov, President of Rusenergosbyt, Evgeniy Rodin, Partner, Head of Energy Practice at VEGAS LEX and many others.

Andrey Maksimov, Deputy Director of the Electric Power Development Department of the Ministry of Energy of Russia, dedicated his speech to discussing the concept of competition on the retail electric power market.

During the plenary session, Evgeniy Rodin, Partner, Head of Energy Practice at VEGAS LEX, reported about trends and key changes on the wholesale and retail electric power markets. The speaker pointed out that amalgamation of companies on the wholesale market was a worldwide trend and emergence of dominant actors on the market had a positive effect on consumers. In his speech, Mr. Rodin also considered the issue of cross-subsidization, the regulatory guillotine, and the unified law on tariff regulation.

At the end of the plenary session, the forum members split up among theme-based round tables.

Andrey Maksimov, Deputy Director of the Electric Power Development Department of the Ministry of Energy of Russia, and Petr Konyushenko, General Director of AtomEnergoSbyt JSC, spoke at the round table dedicated to power market development and digital technologies implementation in the marketing activities. An active discussion was invoked by the demand management project, which currently presents a new form of interaction between clients and sales companies acting as aggregators. Mikhail Andronov, President of Rusenergosbyt, reported about digitalization of the interaction process between members within the project.

Discussants pointed out that the development trend of the power market’s sales sector is specifically associated with the implementation of new technological solutions. Nowadays, clients initially have high expectations from services, as they see the development examples in other industries. So, understanding this trend, sales companies implement the best practices in their activities.

Evgeniy Rodin, Partner, Head of Energy Practice at VEGAS LEX, spoke at the round tables dedicated to the electric power transmission services market, regulatory contract, and licensing of power sales activities.

The licensing theme, within which Mr. Rodin detailed the requirements for power sales activities, the procedure for granting, re-issuing, and terminating licenses, and the key aspects of licensing control, was of particular interest for the audience.

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You can read more about VEGAS LEX’s activities in the power industry here.