Heating forecast

Warming in Moscow houses is delayed due to Indian summer

It looks like Muscovites, freezing in their apartments due to damp and windy weather, will have to make do with electric heaters and woolen socks for now. In the near future there will be no centralized heating in the capital, even in trial mode. As the Moscow Fuel and Energy Department told Vremya Novostey yesterday, “weather conditions in the capital do not yet allow for heating tests.” The average daily air temperature in the city, where during the day the thermometer still somehow reaches 16-17 degrees Celsius, and at night - up to 10, does not correspond to the main and only condition for the beginning of the heating season, which presupposes an average daily temperature of less than 8 degrees Celsius. within five days. In addition, weather forecasters predict the beginning of Indian summer at the end of September.

“We did not receive any official information regarding preliminary tests of the heating network at the beginning of this week,” said press secretary of the department of fuel and energy complex Marina Gaze. “Test launches will begin only depending on the weather, but, as you understand, it’s too early to do this.” Raifa Bitkova, head of the press center of Moscow United Energy Company OJSC (MOEK), said in an interview with a Vremya Novostei correspondent that they have to work solely “depending on the weather.” According to her, energy workers are financially dependent on the weather, and unlike all other city residents, the cold only benefits them. “Last year’s warm winter caused us losses of almost 5 billion rubles,” Ms. Bitkova complained about the vagaries of the weather. However, the representative of MOEK is confident that the “historically verified startup temperature of the city’s heating system” is much more accurate than any discontent of the townspeople. Since premature heating in apartments, according to Ms. Bitkova, at the height of the traditional Indian summer causes no less dissatisfaction than a lack of heat in early autumn.

By the way, the general director of MOEK, Alexander Remezov, announced the company’s readiness to supply heat to homes and institutions at the end of last week, especially since, according to him, thermal workers have already begun to receive complaints about the cold in the premises from the heads of kindergartens, schools, and maternity hospitals and other social facilities. The energy company has prepared a schedule of test fires and is generally ready for the heating season, but the signal must come from the management of the city's municipal services complex. “We are formally, bureaucratically tied to the management of the complex, but so far no such order has been received,” said Ms. Bitkova. In addition, according to her, the authorities “have received a forecast for warming, and, apparently, the start of the heating season is temporarily delayed.”

Traditionally, the heating season in Moscow begins no earlier than the end of September - beginning of October. Moreover, thermal units, according to Raifa Bitkova, as a rule, after a test run, “smoothly transition to constant heating” and do not have the practice of interrupting the heat supply. Let us recall that last year the heating season in the city began on October 3, with some delay due to the increased load on the heating system in the winter of 2005-2006.

If power engineers are in a hurry to offer their services, then the capital’s mayor’s office seems to believe that the current false start of the heating season provides time for more thorough preparations. As the head of the fuel and energy department, Evgeny Sklyarov, recently said at a meeting at the city’s municipal services complex, last winter the number of outages of residential buildings due to damage in the networks of JSC MOEK increased by 9%, mainly due to wear and tear of equipment and networks . And in preparation for the approaching frosts, it is still necessary to repair about 74 thermal stations and 107 boiler houses, and carry out preventive work in 30 thousand residential buildings and 442 dormitories.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO