Sebastopol Preparing to Implement Smart Energy Pilot Project
Sebastopol will serve as a pilot site for the testing of new power grid technologies in urban and rural conditions in 2017–2018, Alexei Chaly, Deputy Director of the EnergyNet working group and a Deputy in the city’s Legislative Assembly, told RIA Novosti.
The region is being considered as a candidate for the implementation of a project involving the integrated introduction of smart grids to energy as part of the EnergyNet roadmap of the National Technological Initiative. The project roadmap for its implementation in 2017–2018 will be presented at the end of December for consideration by the Russian government.
Smart Grids
According to Chaly, the implementation of the project signifies the emergence of new quality power grids that will make it possible to generate electricity with minimal costs. The new technologies ensure three key conditions: the reliability of energy supplies, the quality (no power surges) and the accessibility of power grids for consumers, Chaly said.
“One of the main principles for energy supplies is reliability that describes the number and time of disruptions. The new grid allows for improving this indicator by several times”, he said.
The technology also reduces the total number of accidents in the energy sector. The origin of most accidents is not currently established. In rural areas, in the event a power line breaks, the new technology makes it possible to disconnect a minimum number of consumers, Chaly said. In addition, anyone can connect to two sources of power supply in order to quickly switch between them.
“In the urban environment, the connection to different sources has already been implemented. The issue is the automation that handles the switch. The introduction of the smart grid will make it so that any isolated damage to a grid will not even be noticed by the consumer since the switch time does not take more than one tenth of a second”, the project authors note.
The grid with the new features for consumers will be fully reliable, while energy companies will have the ability to conduct repairs without disconnecting consumers.
Why Sebastopol?
Chaly makes no secret of the fact that he himself worked on implementing the project in Sebastopol and explained why.
“First, it’s a rather dedicated energy system. It’s a good mix of urban and rural areas. And it makes sense for there to be reliable power supplies where the Black Sea base is located”, Chaly said.
He also believes there is a political aspect to implementing an ultra-modern energy project in a region that found itself in an energy blockage in 2015 due to Ukraine’s actions.
The project’s implementation will also be closely tied to the construction of a base generation facility in Sebastopol, where a steam and gas power plant with capacity of 470 megawatts is already under construction.
Cost and development
The project developments are Russian and 25 Russian companies are prepared to join the future consortium once it is implemented. Chaly was unable to cite the precise amount of investment that will be required to implement the project, noting that the issue has not been fully resolved.
“According to calculations, if the existing ‘dead’ energy system of Sebastopol is restored as part of existing technologies, about RUB 5 billion will be required. The calculation was performed by Rosseti. If restoration takes place using the new technologies, there will definitely be less spending and the results will be much better”, Chaly said.
He said the cost may amount to roughly 75% of the spending on the restoration of distribution grids using the existing technologies.
Source: https://ria.ru/economy/ (Russian)
