MUTUAL BENEFIT REQUIRES VOLUNTARY CERTIFICATION
Daniil Sulimov
Deputy General Designer, Chief Designer of Gas Turbine Drives for Power Generating Sets and Facilities of Their Application of Aviadvigatel OJSC.
Deputy Director of Industrial Engines Program - Chief Designer of United Engine Corporation Management Company, CJSC.
Valery Toroschin
Head of the team in Certification and Quality Management Department of Aviadvigatel OJSC
In the year 2008 Aviadvigatel OJSC received certificates of conformity for Ural-2500 and Ural-6000 gas turbine generating sets and their modifications. The documents are valid till the end of the year 2011. The certificates are issued by ENCERTICO which is a certifying authority of the voluntary certification system in power industry. This event became more important for Aviadvigatel OJSC and other manufacturers of power-generating equipment due to RAO UES of Russia reorganization that took place a year ago.
GTU-2.5P and GTU-4P are the only gas turbines in RF, which have certificates of environmental conformance.
These certificates allow to use the gas turbines i
n the most densely populated areas.
Aviadvigatel OJSC has got the certificate of the company production conformity for maintaining generating set
working capacity including assembly, commissioning,
maintenance and servicing.
GTU-TEC cogeneration heat and power plant on the basis of two Ural-6000 gas turbine generaing sets.
Silvinit OJSC, Solikamsk
Before the year 2008 RAO UES of Russia OJSC was, in fact, the state monopolist using permanent assets and resources that Russia had received from the Soviet Union. For 17 years high technical potential of the former Soviet power system allowed to meet the requirements of Russian economy practically without any renewals of permanent assets and large investments in the field development.
Technical progress required equipment upgrade, state-of-the-art developments and Russian power engineering achieving the level of the world leading countries. It meant huge investments. But in Russia the terms of the branch financing changed due to previous market transformations.
Therefore in order to attract extra-budgetary funds and large strategic investors to the branch including foreign ones, as well as using private interest in certain projects, consideration of local development factors and application of market mechanisms for electricity rates development, the RAO UES of Russia was restructured.
During the reform the branch structure changed: functions of natural monopoly (electric power transmission, operational and supervisory control) and potentially competitive functions (electric-power generation and sale of electric power, repair and service) were divided and instead of previous vertically integrated companies that performed all these functions, the structures that specialize in separate kinds of activity were formed.
Newly-established companies are enterprises that specialize in certain kinds of activity (generation, electric power transmission and others) and control corresponding core assets. The scope of the established companies core activities is larger than former regional monopolies: new companies unite core enterprises of several regions or they are all-Russian enterprises.
Now at the local level and in different regions chief specialists of power gensets have to take decisions concerning materials and equipment choice and purchase at their own peril and risk. In this case the main decision criterion is appreciation of product and service conformance to technical standard documentation requirements given that correspondent certificates are available.
Today each of newly-established enterprises: wholesale generating company (OGC), territorial generating company (TGC), interregional distributing network company (MRSC), distributing network company (RSC) as well as federal network company of the united energy system (FSC) has to follow its own Regulations on specified procurement procedure.
As a rule, such Regulations are based on S-UES 3D 4-2005 Standard of RAO UES of Russia OJSC, in which officially the preference is given to the purchased products having voluntary certificate of conformity.
In fact, enterprises often face conformity falsification of products subject to certification that involves losses of time and money because of defective products. Power industry enterprises together with certification bodies have to force against information falsification by tighten control over observance of qualification bidding terms and conditions. Otherwise regular supply with materials and equipment and stable operation are violated and even the existence of the enterprise itself is threatened.
Permit for application in Hungary Gas turbines rated at 2.5…25 MW produced by Aviadvigatel OJSC.
Considerable growth of similar products supply in domestic and foreign markets makes top managers of financially independent power enterprises pay much attention to certification of applied products (works, services). It is the only standard form of public confirmation of products safety and quality in the market.
It is also the demand of foreign stockholders, which in the year 2007 were allowed to management of several wholesale generating and territorial generating companies. In the view of cost efficiency, power industrial enterprises with their constant need in high-grade material and manufacturing resources are not able to perform complete independent measurements, tests and examination of necessary products themselves.
In order to organize these procedures it is necessary to develop supplementary (secondary) expensive tests and examinations commensurable with the principal production and not only with it.
Federal law of December 27, 2002 (¹184-FZ) «Technical Regulation» forbids material resources customers to carry out independent certification because the risk to get biased assessment of their safety and quality is rather high.
In our opinion, in the course of time the value of independent certification will continue to grow because it gives the customer an opportunity to:
- secure in advance its production from defective products, works and services nonprofessionally executed by contractors;
- stimulate reasonable competition among suppliers expanding the scope of choice;
- support interaction of production operation and its procurement.
Now voluntary certification by the third party provided by the legislative body in the Federal Law ¹ 184-FZ «Technical Regulation» is the only form of replacing the product quality command regulation.
A lot of generating enterprises have already realized the necessity to have the evidence of products conformity asses-sment before conclusion of contracts for power equipment supply to facilities. While contracts conclusion they already specify the requirement of conformity certificates availability.
Other companies will inevitably come to the same practice sooner or later because generation of their own independent system of conformity assessment (similar to ENCERTICO) will result in costs comparable with primary production costs.
An honest manufacturer or supplier knows the customer's requirements and he is concerned to confirm in advance that his products meet all qualifying requirements. Such precaution will help him to avoid all potential customer's doubts in production quality.
Therefore in 1998 a certification and licensing team was created within Aviadvigatel certification and licensing department for certification and licensing of gas turbines and facilities of their application. The team executes a large range of works connected with issue of certificates and licenses for industrial equipment and correspondent activity of Perm design bureau.
Aviadvigatel OJSC executes constant work to keep conformance certificates up-to-date and to search potential partners in certification issues. Today the company analyses whether it is reasonable to certify our power equipment not only in ENCERTICO system of voluntary certification in power industry, but also in a new system of voluntary certification called NP «VTI» registered by the Federal Agency for Russian Technical Regulation in April 2009.
