Functioning and Integration of Regional Electric Power Complexes

Over the recent years the Russian Federation has been actively promoting the idea of establishing supranational economic unions such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The paper presents the short review of the Union formation, the prospects of development and studies the possibility to converge national types of economic activity into a general mechanism. The aim of the research is to analyze operating conditions of national electric power complexes and to reveal the factors interfering the formation of common power market of the Eurasian Economic Union. The research was carried out on the basis of historical, economic, statistical, comparative, logical, factorial, and system analysis methods, which has made it possible to reveal the main obstacles impacted on the formation of the common market. As a result of the analysis, the potential of national economies, the volumes of development and consumption of electric energy, the structure of generating capacities, the cost of electric power of the states and the principles of functioning of the national power markets were presented. In course of the research it has been established that the formation of common electric power market will face the following challenges: the scale of separate national industries in relation to other national electric power complexes; divergent national industry structures influencing the final cost of electric energy tariffs; lack of technical capacity to converge national electric power complexes into a common electric power market, etc. The paper presents the mechanisms for the solution of the specified problems.