Alexander Fishov, Novosibirsk scientist and NSTU Professor became the finalist of the 2018 "Distributed Power Generation — Great Achievements" international award. The "Golden Lightning" award ceremony was held as part of a large-scale Annual Energy Forum at the Congress center of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation in Moscow on December 7. The joint development of NSTU and OOO "Tornado Modular Systems" received the experts award in the "Innovative Development in the Field of Energy" nomination at the VI international "Distributed Power Generation – Great Achievements". Professor A. Fishov, a scientist from Novosibirsk State Technical University was awarded the finalist diploma and received the invitation for further cooperation and participation in the competition from the Distributed Power Generation Association. The Annual Energy Forum and the "Distributed Power Generation — Great Achievements" International Award Ceremony gathered more than 250 participants from different regions of Russia and abroad.
At the end of June 2018, NSTU successfully tested a prototype of Smart EnergyGate which can put an end to the monopoly in the electric power industry. This device allows quick and cheap connection of small power plants to a public grid and automatic management of their work. The innovative development will provide reliable power supply to remote facilities as well as give the owners of small power plants the opportunity to earn in the long term, since they will be able to sell electricity to the public electric grid and compete with large power generation facilities, such as thermal, nuclear and hydro power plants.
Smart EnergyGate for connection to electric networks and management of small power plants was created at the Automated Electric Power Systems Faculty of Novosibirsk State Technical University headed by Professor Alexander Fishov. The device allows quick and cost-effective connection of small power plants to the public grid and management of their work in automatic mode.
The development solves two important problems. The first is reliable and cheap power supply to remote facilities. Remote facilities (factories, residential complexes) often operate on their own power plants because consumption of public grid energy for them is too expensive due to the high losses in the transmission of energy over long distances. But it is impossible to rely only on their own power: in case of an accident the object is left without electricity. Smart EnergyGate allows automatic control of the power plant operation and connection to the public power grid in case of an accident or the need for additional power. In addition, Smart EnergyGate can combine small power plants in isolated energy systems. No other devices are required for the connection with this innovative complex.
The second task is to transfer electricity from small power plants to the public power grid. In the future, the owners of small power plants will be able to provide electricity to their facilities as well as to sell "surplus" energy to the public grid. The new device developed by Novosibirsk engineers enables the control of these processes in an autonomous mode without human intervention. At the moment, Russian legislation does not allow making profit from private power generation, but the near future can see the laws that will allow owners to earn from the work of small power plants. In the future, the owners of small power plants will be able to compete with the natural monopoly: centralized power generation and electrical grid.
Until June 20, the prototype of Smart EnergyGate underwent complex testing on the electrodynamic model of EPS at the Faculty of Automated Electric Power Systems of NSTU; the tests proved to be successful. The device was created by NSTU in collaboration with Novosibirsk innovative company "Tornado Modular Systems".
Joint innovative development of the Novosibirsk State Technical University and OOO"Tornado MC " resulted in 4 patent applications. The proposed breakthrough technical solutions for combining distributed power generation with the public grid are have no analogues either in Russia or in the world.
In March 2018, the project was presented to Andrey Travnikov, the acting Governor of Novosibirsk Oblast, during his visit to the company "Tornado Modular Systems". The head of the region commissioned the specialists of NSTU and "Tornado Modular Systems" to work out the projects in the areas of "Smart Municipal Energy" and "Smart Distributed Power Generation". As a result, the first SmartEnergy Gates are prepared to be installed in Berezovy district of Novosibirsk and in Ye.N. Meshalkin clinic.
Oleg Serdyukov, the director of "Tornado Modular Systems" said that the target markets to export deals are the BRICS countries and South-East Asia. The volume of electrical grid construction in target markets by 2035 is estimated at $270 billion. The share of such devices in the total amount of construction is about 10%.
According to the developers, the device will be in demand in Russia. It can be used for power supply of new remote housing estates, waste incineration plants with associated production of heat and electricity, in the reconstruction of boilers to be equipped with the electricity generation mode. There are about 50 thousand objects of distributed power generation in Russia now.
Previously, NSTU scientists developed "back-ups for cities", a heavy-duty energy storage which can supply electricity to factories and even entire cities.