OREANDA-NEWS. On 28 August 2008 was announced, that IES-Holding's top managers had presented to journalists in Samara the general strategy and concepts of the company's investment projects in power industry. At a press conference held on August 26 the investment program of VoTGC (TGC-7) approved by IES-Holding, VoTGC's strategic shareholder, was also presented.

According to investment projects of TGCs incorporated in IES-Holding, new facilities with a total capacity of over 3 GW will be constructed. As part of the IES investment program, 18 projects will be implemented in seven Russian regions.

Mikhail Slobodin, IES-Holding's President, said that the company will fulfill its obligations to the Government regarding construction of new power generation facilities. "IES intends to develop power generation facilities at a rate that will allow the Holding to be a leader in power production in Russia, to construct new facilities ahead of economic growth in the Russian regions and to use in construction the state-of-the-art and energy-efficient technologies and equipment", said the head of IES-Holding. 
In early August, IES-Holding's investment committee approved at large the investment programs of four territorial generating companies of which IES is the main shareholder; however, some projects need to be refined before transition to the implementation stage. The program will be presented in full in autumn 2008.

The investment program of OJSC Volzhksaya TGC that stipulates construction of new generating facilities with a combined capacity of about 470 MW was presented in detail by the company's General Director Vasily Nikonov. The list of major projects includes construction of a 228-MW combined-cycle plant at the Syzran Heat and Power Plant and technical upgrade of Novokuibyshevskaya Heat and Power Plant No. 1 where a 231-MW gas turbine unit using the steam-gas cycle will be installed.

"The cost of Volzhskaya TGC's investment program is 26 billion roubles. After many years this is the first case of such large-scale investments into power industry in the Samara, Saratov, Orenburg and Ulyanovsk Regions. Our goal is to make supply of energy to consumers more reliable and to qualitatively improve the economic efficiency of the plants incorporated into Volzhskaya TGC," said Vasily Nikonov.

During their stay in Samara, IES-Holding's top managers had a working meeting with the Samara Region Governor Vladimir Artyakov and visited the heat and power plants belonging to the Samara energy system where they met with the personnel and heads of the plants and inspected operating facilities. Mikhail Slobodin was accompanied by Andrey Shishkin, IES-Holding's Operations Director, and Vasily Nikonov, head of VoTGC.