Political decisions are needed for synchronizing electricity systems of East and West

Synchronization of the electricity systems of the East and the West is a technical question but political decisions are needed for deciding it. In this way chairman of the Board of RAO EES Rossii Anatoly Chubais commented to journalists on the purpose of his conversations in Brussels with high-placed representatives of the European Commission and with president of the Union for the Coordination of Transmission of Electricity (UCTE) Martin Fuchs.

On Tuesday the head of the Russian power holding set forth in the capital of the European Union the stand of Russia and of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) member countries on establishment of a Eurasian power grid with a view to switching the electricity systems of the CIS and Baltic states over to working parallel with the Transeuropean Synchronized United Electricity System of the states of Western, Central and South-Eastern Europe.

According to Chubais, unification of the electricity systems of the East and the West is an extremely complex procedure. Today it is impossible to fix clear time limits for it, and it is too early to talk of them. "It is a matter of years," he believes.

It is an unprecedented project. In the world there is no electric power system of such giant capacity as the Eurasian power grid can have. It is a fundamental technical question and also a very juridically complex problem. The matter does not concern "addition of systems which already took place but unification". It is an entirely new prospect. It also requires research, the head of RAO EES said.

But it is impossible to do all this without political decisions, specifically of the European Union, he stressed. According to Chubais, in the European Commission he met with the understanding of the importance of this project.

Permanent representative of Russia to the European Communities Vasily Likhachev told RIA Novosti that "the presentation of RAO EES Rossii aroused great interest in the diplomatic and business circles of the West." In his opinion, "it reflects the high level of interaction of Russia and the EU in the political and economic spheres, and corresponds to the sides' priorities in the field of the dialogue on energy."