The engineers of the Power Engineering Faculty, NSTU NETI have launched the first Russian unmanned system that automatically supplies distributed generation electricity to the general power grid. A large-scale implementation of the development can demonopolize the Russian electricity market, as well as reduce the cost of housing construction. Most importantly, it can reduce the amount of harmful emissions into the atmosphere by cutting the share of inefficient centralized energy generation with its high losses during the transmission to the consumer.
The first Russian “unmanned” smart grid Smart EnergyGate, a hardware and software complex that provides the energy supply from a local power station to a genaral power grid, is commissioned at the Berezovoye residential complex in Novosibirsk, said Alexander Fishov, head of the project and professor at the Department of Automated Electric Power Systems. The software and hardware complex was created by engineers of the Power Engineering Faculty, NSTU NETI in collaboration with the Novosibirsk innovative company "Tornado Modular Systems". Now the equipment is installed, the personnel of the autonomous power plant are trained, and test launches of the system are carried out. The completion of the entire work cycle is planned for March or April 2020 with full-fledged parallel operation of the transition between the smart grid and an external power grid. The important feature of the system is that it manages the local power plant in fully automatic mode eliminating human errors. The operator only monitors the correct operation of the system.
The development of the NSTU NETI scientists solves two important problems. The first is reliable and cheap power supply to remote facilities. Remote objects (factories, residential complexes) often work from their own power plants; it is too expensive for them to consume energy from a common grid owing to high losses during the transmission of energy over long distances. But you can't rely only on your own power plant: in the event of an accident, the facility will remain without electricity. Smart EnergyGate automatically manages the operation of the power plant and in the event of an accident or need for additional power it can receive electricity from the general power grid. In addition, Smart EnergyGate can combine small power plants into isolated power systems. The innovative complex requires no other devices for connection to the general power grid.
Second task is to transfer of power from small power plants to the general power grid. Using this opportunity, owners of small power plants can provide electricity to their facilities, as well as sell the "surplus" to the general power grid, thus increasing the payback of their power plants. The new device of Novosibirsk engineers allows managing these processes automatically, without human intervention. In the near future, the owners of small power plants will be able to compete with the natural monopoly, i.e., centralized generation and electric grids.
The technical design specification of this overhaul was coordinated with the regional electric grid company (AO "Regional Electric Power Grids") and the regional dispatch center (a branch of AO "United Power Systems"). "First of all, we were faced with the issue of electricity quality. The power networks are ready to let us into the general power grid only if we do not spoil the quality of electricity, if we strictly comply with all the requirements that are set in our grids. But our smart grid allows doing this, it automatically tracks the parameters of energy and simply will not release it to the general power grid if it does not meet the standard," says Associate Professor Denis Armeyev, one of the project's co-authors.
Now, complex network reconstruction and expensive integration of the power plant into the existing control system must be carried out in places where distributed generation is connected to the general power grid. According to the developer, Smart EnergyGate will help solve these problems. Electric companies will get electricity at the same price as the "big generation", but at the same time reduce the equipment loss and wear since there is no need to transfer energy over long distances.
"The development of distributed generation (DG) is one of the main directions in modern electric and heat power industries. Distributed power generation capacity is up to 25 MW. Abroad, small-scale distributed power generation is developing at a significant pace because of its technical and socio-economic advantages in comparison with centralized power supply systems. Small generation has a high efficiency and low losses in grids. Its advantages include short construction time and objects mobility", says Alexander Fishov, Professor at the Department of Automated Electric Power Systems. Furthermore, the developers expect that the introduction of smartgrids will attract additional investment into the Russian energy sector from small and medium-sized businesses: according to preliminary calculations, the sale of electricity to the general power grid can reduce a local station payback period by 30-50 %.
Oleg Serdyukov, Director of Tornado Modular Systems Company notes that the BRICS and South-East Asia countries are considered as target markets for exports. The network construction in target markets by 2035 is estimated at $270 billion. Such devices can amount to about 10 % of network construction.
According to the developers, the device will be in demand in Russia, since it can be used for power supply of new remote housing estates, at waste incineration plants with associated production of heat and electricity, during the reconstruction of boiler plants to be transferred to generating electric energy. There are now about 50 thousand distributed power generation facilities in Russia.
The new technology of NSTU NETI engineers can become an incentive for the development of urban construction in Russia and reduce the cost of housing. The development can significantly expand the boundaries of cities by building remote, autonomous neighborhoods, reducing dependence on central heating systems. This could have an impact on reducing the cost of building residential areas and, ultimately, on the price of housing.
Switching to distributed power generation can also improve the environment by reducing harmful emissions to the atmosphere owing to cutting losses on long-distance transmission of electricity, partially replacing coal-fired generation with more environmentally friendly gas, and reducing the concentration of harmful emissions due to the spatial distribution of power plants at a significant distance from each other and their concentration. Currently, there are 16 small-scale distributed power generation facilities in Novosibirsk and its suburbs with a total capacity of 437 MW, which exceeds the installed capacity, for example, of the Novosibirsk CHPP-2. If at least half of the small-scale distributed power generation facilities were connected to the general power grid, Novosibirsk would become the first major city in Russia with a demonopolized electricity market.
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The first experience in Russia in applying the developed system automation is the project of converting the existing local power supply system of the Berezovoye residential complex in Novosibirsk into an intelligent minigrid that can work in an automatic mode or, depending on the conditions, in parallel with an external centralized power system. The residential complex TPP includes 5 G3520S gas-piston units (GPU) by Caterpillar with a capacity of 2000 kW each. The consumers of electricity are mainly residential buildings with a load of 2.9 MW, as well as a plant of reinforced concrete products and construction machinery with a capacity of 2.4 MW. The excess capacity of the TPP for transmission to the general power grid can be up to 6 MW.
Operation of the TPP in stand-alone mode revealed a number of problems that can be solved by smartgrid. For example, the GPU has a minimum load requirement due to increased wear of the piston group when the load is reduced. The value of the minimum GPU load depends on its brand and can vary from 20 to 50 %. If the load drops below the minimum, the unit control system signals an unacceptably low load for a certain time (no more than 45 minutes). Since there is a nighttime consumption gap in the energy supply of residential areas, some stations even have to install electric boilers as a load. Smartgrid will solve this problem by transferring excess power from the GPU to the general power grid for other consumers.