First Day of the International Grid Forum UPGrid-2013

II International Grid Forum “International Innovation and Progress in Grid” (UPGrid-2013), organized by JSC “Russian Grids” with the support of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, started its work in Moscow.
The key topics of the event were issues related to development of smart energy industry, introduction of innovative technologies and equipment in the grid complex of the country and improvement of the regulatory and technical basis in power industry.
At the opening ceremony Oleg Budargin, Director General of JSC “Russian Grids”, emphasized: “Now we are on the threshold of major changes, large-scale projects, one of which is development of the Far East and East Siberia. We daily discuss not just the projects themselves, but the ways and the tools of their implementation in order to increase the efficiency and quality of power supply of our consumers. Today, the main thing is not so much attracting new consumers as ensuring reliability for the existing consumers and grid. In this field we have great expectations of our scientists and designers, search for new forms of cooperation and equipment, in order to further increase the energy-efficiency and availability of grids as well as to reduce losses”.

The Innovation Forum UPGrid-2013 is an exhibition and discussion platform, where they demonstrate latest achievements in power industry and electric engineering and lead a multilateral dialogue about various aspects of cooperation between the state, science, design institutes and industry in the field of creating the Russian smart grid.
One of the stands most popular among visitors that day was the stand of the magazine “ELECTRIC POWER. Transmission and Distribution”. The participants of the Forum (Sergey Schumacher, Deputy General Director for the Technical Policy, Chief Engineer of JSC “IDGC of Centre”, and Pavel Zinchenko, Chief Engineer of JSC “Kubanenergo”, among them), discussed with the management board of the magazine topical issues of innovative grid development and introduction of innovative Russian technologies on the market and came up with the ideas about issues to be discussed in the magazine.
According to interviews given to correspondents of RusCable.Ru Media Holding by UPGrid-2013 Forum participants, who demonstrated their innovative developments and unique technologies, this year’s exhibition and agenda are notable for their rationality and clarity of the tasks set. It should be underlined that within the framework of discussions special attention is focused not only on the achievements but on the problems yet unsolved, which hinder the industry’s development.
For instance, there was a heated debate about establishing standards for the Smart Grid in the panel “Goals of standardizing the smart electric-power industry”. According to the parties of the dialogue, smart electric-power industry is still in the process of establishing itself; there exist numerous approaches, technologies, standards, which are at times incompatible with each other. This impedes innovative development of the industry. In Europe and USA the standardization process, including that in the field of Smart Grid, is going on in a very active way. “As for Russia, it seems to have stuck at the beginning of the 2000s”, said Aleksander Zazhigalkin, Deputy Head of “Rosstandart”. “Russian specialists (designers, directors for certain matters, engineers) seem to underestimate the importance of establishing standards for the electric-power industry. But how can the industry develop without them?”
“Standard is the basis for innovations”, emphasized Alexander Dzhincharadze, Director for Regulation and Technology of “Russian Energy Agency”, Doctor of Technical Sciences. “In “ELECTRIC POWER. Transmission and Distribution” issue №5 of this year I stated my point of view about standardization development in Russia. Issue №3 of that very magazine contained suggested sets of standards concerning Smart Grid. You should read the materials. The information provided is useful and interesting”.
The round-table discussion “Future grids: the 3D space of relationship between distributed generation, grid organizations and end consumers” was no less lively. The moderator, General Director of JSC “R&D Centre for Power Engineering” Vladimir Dorofeev, invited the participants to stop idealizing distributed generation but to focus on the problems of the electric grid complex caused by development of small-scale generation and to find optimal ways of solving them. According to Igor Kozhukhovsky, Deputy Director of “Russian Energy Agency”, one of these solutions should be lifting the state ban of developing small-scale generation for grid companies.
You can read about the most interesting events of the Forum in next issues of the magazines “ELECTRIC POWER. Transmission and Distribution” and “KABEL-news”.