OREANDA-NEWS. June 29, 2010. Adam Smith’s the first forum “Power efficiency in Russia” took place on June 23—24, 2010 in Moscow with the official support of FSI “Russian Energy Agency” (REA) of Ministry of Energy of Russia. The Forum became the international site for discussion of optimal methods of achievement of power efficiency in Russia and fruitful sharing gained practical experiences.

Key Russian and foreign companies of power industry took place in the proceedings of conference. In the course of speeches and discussions participants of the forum analyzed efficiency of legislative initiatives for power saving including Federal Law 261 “On power saving and on increase of power efficiency...” and   legal regulation of this law, considered examples in practice of companies with relation to their technical feasibility and economic attractiveness.

Evgeny Makarov, the General Director of IDGC of Centre, JSC, demonstrated role of the Grid Company in the projects of increase of power efficiency and power saving and presented initiatives of IDGC of Centre in implementation of the project “Smart cities— smart grids”.

Commenting Federal Law on power saving and on increase of power efficiency the General Director of IDGC of Centre noted that this law gave impulse significant enough to development, use of the greatest potential for power saving and increase of efficiency of national economic complex in whole which market mechanisms provides.

IDGC of Centre is studying and not for the first year has been putting international experiences in construction of “smart grids”, “smart account”, “smart city” into practice successfully. The Company participates in working groups of Energy Council Under European Commission, in particular in the group on “smart account” of consumer load, in international consortium of “smart cities” of the world where Belgorod — city from Russia is represented as well. Here IDGC of Centre together with municipality and Regional Administration got projects “Smart grid” and “Smart city” on the road.

“We have intelligent meter or “smart meter” on which basis we have been developing pilot project in Belgorod at the beginning, and now we are replicating namely this project to other branches of the Company. Today we are developing strategy of construction of smart grid till 2020 which is based on the technical policy of IDGC of Centre. Approved investment programs of the Company already contain elements of “smart grid” which we are going to implement, — Evgeny Makarov noted.

IDGC of Centre applies elements of “smart management” of city lightning, reclosers in medium-voltage system allowing to make this system observable and to automate processes of localization of disturbances in grids maximally. Besides, there are projects on increase of observability of 6/0,4 kv grid on the basis of the simplest cheap devices similar to teleautomatics. Special booster transformers (boosters) are used in grids of IDGC of Centre. They are installed at long-distance transmission circuits of 0,4 kv and allow to adjust voltage levels of grid sections without reconstruction.

Today IDGC of Centre is developing its own asset management system based on balanced system of indicators and use of main modules of transaction system SAP R/3. As of now all 3,2 million consumers and more than 20 million equipment items are entered in common database. In the unified system power productive supply is being formed, calculations on revenue, cost of electric power transmission service are being made, all ratings of equipment and data of its diagnostic are at up-to-date level. This allows the Company to optimize equipment replacement and repair programs.

As Sergey Pikin, the Director of the Power Development Fund, noted implementation of innovative decisions mark IDGC of Centre off on favorable terms. The Company is constantly improving technologies, applying creatively different decisions, implementing developments of national and foreign science.

“Adam Smith’s international forum allowed not only to share our projects but also provided opportunity to estimate other participants of the industry and to draw their best practice, to discuss urgent topics”, — Evgeny Makarov emphasized.