Restructuring of the energy sector and liberalization of the electricity market resulted in separation of a single industry into a multitude of generating companies, federal and interregional distribution utilities, regional power providers and energy suppliers. For a number of reasons, related to the process of managing separate companies, faults in the laws and regulations, and unsatisfactory technical state of the energy equipment both on the part of distributors and consumers, reliability of energy supply faces increasing negative trends, which potentially can lead to big problems. Up to this day the energy sector does not have a developed database on the state of equipment and results of its maintenance, nor has it defined criteria to actually assess technical conditions of the equipment. The authors propose to develop and implement a mechanism aimed at technical auditing and monitoring of the engineering state of external power supply system, whose results can help in the development of more efficient and economically sound measures to improve reliability of energy supply. In recent years, a lot of attention has been paid to the issues of enhanced security of industrial power supply. However, specific characteristics of underground coal mining and enormous work load of the production process limit the applicability of developed methods and algorithms. Existing research does not address economic issues of reliable energy supply, either direct (economic damage from power interruptions, contractual security of supply, tariff regulation) or indirect (charges for utility connection with a required level of reliability). There is no explicit definition for the term «autonomous energy source», nor is there a list of power receivers falling into the first and «special» categories according to their reliability. The paper contains a range of urgent problems and solutions that will increase reliability of external power supply in the coal mines.
