Today, heads of the largest electricity corporations discussed energy supply management during the COVID-19 pandemic and exchanged views on a wide range of issues related to industry financial support measures, consumer communication and introduction of new practices in common business processes after the lockdown.

The discussions were closed by Pavel Livinskiy, Director General of Rosseti, who proposed to create a new platform in the form of an association for dialogue between the leaders of major international electric power groups.

The videoconference was initiated by Pavel Livinskiy, Director General of Rosseti, who also acted as a discussion moderator. The meeting was attended by the top managers of the State Grid Corporation of China, TEPCO Power Grid (Japan), Enel and Terna (Italy) and KEPCO (South Korea).

The foreign colleagues showed great interest in the report made by the Head of Rosseti on the specifics of company’s activities in the fight against coronavirus. Livio Gallo, the Head of the Global Infrastructure and Networks Division, Enel, was particularly impressed by the size of reserve power supply fleet which Rosseti used to increase the reliable operation of healthcare facilities. According to him, the lack of reserve power supply sources is one of the problems faced by the Italian holding.

Another topic to discuss was the collapse of production chains due to toughened sanitary and epidemiological requirements and transport and logistics restrictions faced by the European countries. Pavel Livinskiy spoke about the well-coordinated work with the Russian suppliers that do not stop production. The holding itself does not plan to reduce critically important items of investment programs, and it is preparing for the new winter season as planned, Head of Rosseti noted.

In addition, the colleagues were interested in the forms of incentives provided to the employees who are directly engaged in the maintenance of reliable and continuous production processes introduced by Rosseti as well as in the prompt transfer of 70% of office workers to remote mode of work.

The foreign colleagues also informed about the methods they used to protect their workers. So, the State Grid Corporation of China and the Enel Group have isolated their shifts from contact with each other, which makes it possible to identify immediately a circle of potentially infected persons if virus is found in one of the employees, thus limiting its spread.

In turn, KEPCO, a Korean vertically integrated holding, and Terna, a main grids operator, put in operation backup dispatching control centers and also completely isolated their shifts geographically.

“Today we can see that digital transformation, in combination with the use of personal daily KPIs described by the Enel representatives, including telecommuting performance analysis, allow us to optimize our business processes by 25%. During telecommuting the labor efficiency remains the same and it becomes even higher in some areas. This is confirmed by our Italian partners,” said Pavel Livinskiy.

The head of the Russian energy holding emphasized that the group organized a closed perimeter for video conferencing among its employees, and since Rosseti is part of critical infrastructure facilities, there is a task set to create its own cybersecurity center.

At the end of the dialogue Pavel Livinskiy underlined once again that the coronavirus “had made it unconditional and inevitable to speed up digital transformation introduction in the power grid infrastructure”.

“It is infrastructure development in the near future that will be the guarantor of economic recovery, and an exchange of views and practices among our companies can play a key role in the preparation of professional industry proposals to be taken into account by the governments of our countries in decision-making” said the Head of Rosseti.

Pavel Livinskiy proposed to establish a platform in the form of an association in order to maintain an ongoing dialogue at the level of top managers of the largest international companies for an exchange of experience, accelerated implementation of digital transformation, comparison of achieved results, peer reviews of applied technological solutions to ensure maximally reliable and safe power supply to the consumers.