Mr Putin congratulated the builders on the unit’s inauguration.
Officials attending the meeting with the President included Anatoly Chubais, the head of RAO Unified Energy Systems, Alexei Klinovy, head of construction at the Northwest Thermal Power Plant, and Fulvio Conti, general director of Italian company Enel.
The Northwest Thermal Power Plant is the first new-generation Russian power plant using steam-gas technology to generate electricity and heat. The decision to build the plant was made in 1992 and the first unit was inaugurated in December 2000. Today, the second unit began industrial operations and this has doubled the plant’s generating capacity, taking it to 900 megawatts.