russia Cannot Cope with Its Own Electrical Energy Deficit

2025 has exacerbated the trend of growing electrical power shortages in russia. Due to demand from industrial, residential, and municipal consumers having exceeded the all power plants’ total generation, as of October this year, the power grid’s capacity shortage has already reached 25 GW.

Among the main causes of the deficit, the most notable is the imbalance between growth of consumption and development of infrastructure.

The state of the main thermal power generation facilities in the rf, which have been in operation for more than 30 years, is characterized by high physical wear and tear – more than 70  % of the capacity of the entire fleet of generating equipment. As a result, transmission lines are overloaded, and local accidents and malfunctions have become commonplace. The most vulnerable areas are the Kamchatka and Krasnoyarsk Territories, Magadan and Sakhalin regions, the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, and the North Caucasus, which are not part of the Unified Energy System of the rf.

Western sanctions imposed for the military invasion of Ukraine have added further pressure, as a result of which russia has lost access to modern energy equipment, software, and technologies. Therefore, the electrical power engineers cannot hope for modernization of power grids and implementation of energy-efficient solutions.

Despite the russian government’s attempts to introduce  at least some measures to stabilize its energy system, such as monetary compensation or discounts on electricity bills for voluntarily reducing consumption during peak hours, as well as disconnecting consumers who do not require a guaranteed electricity supply, the growing electricity deficit indicates a systemic crisis in the russian energy sector. As long as the lion’s share of russia’s budget goes to military spending, the economy and social sphere will not only suffer, they will systemically decline.