On February 26, Oleg Budargin, General Director of Rosseti PJSC, visited the Energy Supply Management Center of Kaliningrad Region, set up at the site of YantarEnergo. Igor Makovsky, General Director of the regional grid company, talked about the preliminary results of implementing innovative projects and the construction of key electrical grid facilities in time for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Meeting participants observed the construction process at the Beregovaya Substation on Oktyabrsky Island in Kaliningrad in real time. The substation building is currently at the bricklaying stage, with the second floor of the building presently under construction. The work is being completed on schedule. The Yuzhnaya substation, which is currently in operation, is undergoing the replacement of cell structures, while the first cutting-edge anchoring supports for electrical power transmission lines have been installed. The reconstruction of the high-voltage line will include transfer of the aerial line into a cable line. This will make it possible to improve the reliability of electricity supply to the new district and help restore electricity supply to the area more quickly in case of accident.  

During the meeting, Oleg Budargin inspected Teleskop, a software product by YantarEnergo JSC. The program will allow consumers to stop reporting their electrical meter data to the electricity sales company, while YantarEnergoSbyt staff will no longer have to visit homes and businesses to inspect the correctness of all energy meter data. All of the processes have been automated. The head of Rosseti PJSC inspected “user’s cabinets,” where users with smart metering equipment will be able to control and plan their energy spending, and pay their electricity bills.

“Metering and accounting for energy consumption, managing loads and forecasting are important focus areas for energy suppliers. You are a pilot project for smart metering and accounting equipment in this country. The effectiveness of this project will tell us whether we should transfer your experience to the rest of the country,” Oleg Budargin said. 

The first stage of the strategic Smart Grids project is nearing completion, and its intermediate results were discussed at the meeting. Innovative technologies within the framework of the program have had a positive influence on the key indicators of electrical energy supply reliability. All of the transmissions are fully automatic, the network can be monitored and managed. 

Residents of Mamonovsky and Bagrationovsky Districts have already experienced the effectiveness of introducing innovative technologies. Before the project started, electrical repair crews had to visit each accident site at least 5 times. All operations were done manually by the technicians, who had to be in contact with the dispatcher at all times. Finding and localizing the problem area usually took more than 6 hours. Now, the crew only responds to restore the damage once, while response time has dropped to just 49 minutes. Thus, the duration of electricity supply disruptions in 6-15 kV grids has experienced a more than 5-fold decrease.

Experimental projects have also contributed to reducing the time necessary to deal with accidents. One such project is the video monitoring system installed on all the vehicles of emergency response crews. The innovation allows the dispatcher and technical staff to monitor emergency repairs in real time. During the discussion of the project, the meeting participants got connected remotely to one of the cameras. Oleg Budargin praised the potential of the experimental project and said that this experience could be used in the activities of other subsidiary companies of Rosseti PJSC.