Over the last decades there were many debates about suitability and reconstruction ways of those sectors of national economy which in some ways have signs of natural monopoly. A similar situation is taking place in Russia; a special attention is paid on power industry reformation - a classical model of natural monopoly.
At the present time the power grid is a rod of Russian power sector, which involves a complex of economic relations, occurred at the production process (including complex production of power and heat energy), power energy transmission, operative-dispatch management at electric power engineering, distribution and usage of power energy.
Russian power complex is an engine of the country´s development. Not only future of the power sector directly depends on its reformation results but also Russian economy prospects in whole - the place and the role on the world arena.
The main aim of the power sector reconstruction is to form market relations at power industry. It´s specified by the fact that Russian power sector directly and seriously depends on governmental and political institutions and large private conglomerates, it means that power sector is a vertically integrated monopoly with a public form of ownership. According to many experts opinion, monopolistic structure saving at Russian power industry encourages ineffective funds and natural recourses usage that finally affects not only price for the provided service but also quality decrease and leads to consumption rights infringement.
Competitive conditions, created during reform, will let to optimize Russian power grid work and raise efficiency of generating capacity charging. It´s connected with the fact that separation of the present monopoly into independent companies, according to the activity kinds will let to consolidate uncoordinated assets management; it will raise managing ability of the new power sector subjects (operating companies), simplify realization of the single development strategy and involve considerable financial resources. In addition, competitive market creation will raise investment attraction of the network infrastructure; it will create additional abilities for power energy transmission and extend its volume. Due to this, geography of the power energy trade will expand and become more sophisticated, including Export-Import operations. As a result, development of energy-saving technology and energy consumption schemes will be stimulated; it will considerably reduce power inputs per unit of a generated item. The reform will also let to solve the problem of consumers powering reliability, eliminate local electric energy deficiencies which are typical for many Russian regions. Eventually, injected into sectors competitions will let to stabilize prices for electric energy at acceptable level and give new abilities for a schedule and purchases´ value optimization as well as risk compensation.
It´s obvious that power industry reformation will change sector´s structure. New principles and mechanism of control and development of the power industry at the modern market economy should be developed as well as market criterion of estimation of the reform efficiency.
The work was submitted to III international scientific conference «Basic Research», Dominican Republic, April, 10-20, 2008, came to the editorial office 09.02.2008.