This article analyses the legal status of the parties to obligations arising from the reservation of electrical capacity under Russian law. The author focuses primarily on the private-law nature of the rights and obligations of participants in these legal relations. To this end, the study examines both energy and civil legislation, correlating them with current trends in judicial and arbitration practice concerning problematic aspects of contractual performance in this segment of energy supply. The guiding scientific methods employed included formal-logical, systemic, structural-functional, and dialectical approaches to regulating electrical capacity reservation. As a result, the identified legal features give rise to such issues relating to the composition of parties as conflicts of interest. In particular, grid companies seek to shift to fixed payments regardless of the actual volume of electricity consumption, while consumers are interested in maintaining electricity costs as a variable expense item. This situation has created clear legal uncertainty regarding the criteria for the justification of a capacity reserve, which is reflected in the case law examined in the article. Furthermore, the analyzed draft Resolution of the Government of the Russian Federation, prepared by the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, proposes linking the legal relations of capacity reservation to the obligation of the grid company to ensure that power grid facilities remain in a condition suitable for transmitting electricity within the declared maximum capacity of power receivers. Under this model, this service effectively becomes a legal fiction, as it will be considered rendered to the consumer regardless of whether electricity is actually transmitted within the assumed technical capacity of the relevant power receivers.
Konstantin A. Konstantinov (Thu,) studied this question.