Hotline of power engineering specialists:
On 4 September, the Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev paid a working visit to the first digital Distribution Zone in the Moscow region. The trip of the Prime Minister was accompanied by the head of the Ministry of Energy of Russia Alexander Novak and the governor of the Moscow region Andrey Vorobyov.
Effects from the implementation of a new digital Distribution Zone located on the territory of the Sloboda substation in Istrinsky district were demonstrated to members of the delegation by Director General of Rosseti Pavel Livinskiy.
"For the Moscow region this is a pilot project," the head of Rosseti said during the inspection of the facility. "The digital Distribution Zone allows remote control of the grid and electrical equipment in real time, continuously monitor parameters of the process of transmission and consumption of electricity, has self-diagnostic functions, and the control software has a function of self-learning, allowing with the use of the Big Data technology, based on forecast models, to accumulate and analyze data on locations of probable faults in the grid and the most effective schemes for their elimination and backup," stressed Pavel Livinskiy.
All the necessary information is converted into a digital signal and displayed on a modern control panel, which was presented to Dmitry Medvedev and members of the delegation. Mr. Livinskiy noted that if before the location and isolation of the faulty section took crews up to 2 hours, during which consumers were without light, then after the full implementation of the project to troubleshoot and transfer customers to the backup power scheme will take a few minutes. An example of such work was demonstrated to the Prime Minister by dispatchers of the centre on the example of a modelled technological violation.
The "digit" is not only reliability, but also financial efficiency. We expect that the economic effect from the transition to the digital Distribution Zone will exceed 224 million rubles a year. It is quite feasible to reach these figures due to lower costs for optimizing operating modes of equipment, reducing losses, costs for maintenance and operation. And this is just one Distribution Zone!," emphasized Pavel Livinskiy.
During the tour to the feeding centre "Sloboda", the delegation members also visited the hall, where SF6 insulated switchgear and control gear of 220 and 110 kV was installed, intended for receiving and distributing electric power to the substation. The use of SF6 gas as insulating medium gives this equipment a number of advantages: safety for personnel, increased reliability, compactness, fire and explosion safety.
Pavel Livinskiy noted that, within the framework of the Digital Distribution Zone project, special attention will be paid to the installation of smart metering devices that will allow power engineers to automatically monitor real energy consumption. In addition, the Digital Distribution Zone project implementation will integrate the implementation of the Digital Electrician project. It involves the provision of emergency recovery crews with mobile devices with special software. This will allow power engineers to remotely receive tasks for execution of work, electronically to issue necessary permissive documents and work clearance, to record the fact of the beginning and the end of the work. With the help of a mobile device, it will be possible to photograph defects of equipment and quickly place information about them in the database in order to speed up the organization of work on the elimination of the defects. Dispatchers and managers will be able to see the location of the crews on the electronic map, which will allow assigning emergency orders to the crews closest to the place of technological violation.
"Less than a year ago, we announced digitalization as the basis for the innovative development of the power grid complex. Already today I can state that digital solutions are being actively implemented at our facilities in a number of entities. The "Pilot", which we saw today at the substation "Sloboda", is the first, but very important step towards the creation of the digital power grid infrastructure in the Moscow region," reported Pavel Livinskiy to the Prime Minister.
The work on the creation of the Digital Distribution Zone was started in July 2018 and will be fully completed by the end of 2019. Istrinsky district for the implementation of the pilot project was not chosen by chance: it is one of the most densely populated in the Moscow region (320 thousand people) and dynamically developing.