The manufacturing of the first Russian uninterruptible energy supply units for big cities starts in Novosibirsk in January, 2019

The first high capacity energy storage unit was presented at NSTU at the beginning of 2018. It was developed by NSTU and subsidiary enterprise of the ‘Direct Current Systems’ company. The uninterruptible energy supply units were designed at the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering under the guidance of the Vice-rector for Academic Affairs , Doctor of Science Sergey Brovanov. Technical support was provided by the Head of the Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, professor Sergey Kharitonov. The task was to develop the equipment which might store energy during the period of its surplus and provide immediate supply to the networks in times of energy deficiency. So far, two energy storage units have been developed: SNE-1 with capacity of 100-500 kW and SNE-2 with capacity 2-32 mW. The 2mW energy storage unit is able to supply energy to an average settlement during one hour, while the 32 mW is able to do the same for a small town. According to Sergey Brovanov, the energy storage units will raise the efficiency and reliability of electric power supply to consumers as well as the quality of electric power. It will decrease the wear-out rate of electric networks and equipment. Moreover, it will provide the supplementary source of energy in peak demand. The energy storage unit decreases the networks’ wear-out rate due to night energy accumulation which makes it possible to operate power stations equipment in partial load mode. ‘Now the process is at its final lap,’ says the ‘Direct Current Systems’ company Director Viacheslav Kolesnikov, ‘in January we start the pilot production the energy storage units and plan to fulfill the first three orders.’ He pointed out that energy storage devices of such capacity have never been produced in Russia, and there are only few manufacturers in the world which can do the same. The first ordering customers are oil and gas enterprises. There is also some interest from the renewable energy companies. Here, it is interestedly to note that the main consumers of energy storage units abroad are households and local governments, who buy 80 % of their production. The Mayor of Novosibirsk Anatoliy Lokot’ sees the value of energy storage units in the life support maintenance, which is closely linked with energy supply. In case of blackout we might experience serious problems. The energy storage units could be used in case of emergency when installed in multi-storey buildings. The Mayor gave the idea that there might be the cluster for manufacturing energy storage units in Novosibirsk: the accumulators for the units are made by the ‘Liotech’ company and Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant, and super capacitors are made by the ‘Oksid’ company. All in all, approximately twenty local businesses might be involved in the production of energy storage units through supplying 95 % of components. The only imported things are controllers. The Russian energy storage units are less costly than their foreign analogues. The original cost of the SNE- is about 10 bln roubles. As the next step the NSTU researchers plan to increase the capacity of the energy storage units through application of high voltage semiconductor converters, which are under development at present. On December, 20 the Vice-president on Strategic Development and Marketing of the TVEL Fuel Company (Rosatom) Ilja Galkin came to Novosibirsk with working visit. At the meeting with the Governor of the Novosibirsk Region Andrey Travnikov they discussed the issue of setting the cluster on the basis of the ‘Direct Current Systems’ company and Novosibirsk State Technical University. Earlier the TVEL Company representatives expressed their interest in reliable automated systems of energy storage for nuclear power stations and other enterprises of the holding group.