Russia’s first commercial power management module was put in operation at ZiO Podolsk

On 22 March, 2022, the first commercial power management module made by RENERA (part of Rosatom’s TVEL Fuel Company and a manufacturer of energy storage systems) was put in operation at the production site of ZiO Podolsk (part of Rosatom’s power engineering division AtomEnergoMash).

The commissioning ceremony took place via a video link during the Power Grids International Forum held on 22–25 March in Moscow. The ceremony was attended by RENERA CEO Alexander Kamashev, NovaWind CEO Grigoriy Nazarov, and Head of Energy at RENERA Alexey Neshta.

The new project of “Commercial dispatching” using an intelligent energy storage system, developed by RENERA in association with AtomEnergoPromSbyt (part of NovaWind), is an individual solution for each individual production in the field of energy storage systems to improve operational efficiency and power supply reliability. The energy storage system (ESS) is physically installed on the production site and feeds power into the local grid at the time when the price of electric power and capacity is at its highs.

The smart ESS controller developed by AtomEnergoPromSbyt uses predictive analytics to forecast loads in the regional and local grids and remotely optimizes the charging schedule via a centralized power management service. Smart control of the energy storage system through dedicated Russian-designed software saves up to RUB 14 million per installed megawatt in annual electricity costs. Monitoring and remote control is carried out using specialized software developed on the basis of the domestic Altera Universal platform. Each power management module is tailor-made to meet specific consumer demands and can yield tens of megawatts / megawatt-hours depending on actual power consumption and on-site power infrastructure. Its applications range from steel-making, oil and gas industries to heavy and mechanical engineering and other power-intensive sectors.

The pilot energy storage system has a power of 300 kW and a capacity of 300 kWh. Before being put in operation, it was pilot-tested for six months to prove that the module meets the specifications and is safe and reliable. At present, another 700 kW/kWh power management module undergoes commissioning trials at a large mining and steel-making site.

“Installation of the first hi-tech power management module at a large Russian production facility has been finished with success. The plan for the current and subsequent years is to scale up our power management modules to 3–6 MW,” says RENERA CEO Alexander Kamashev.
“The successful use of lithium-ion technologies in energy storage systems in the power supply of industrial enterprises and growing interest to our product from industrial consumers demonstrate clearly that the use of storage systems in the power industry will expand year after year, and so will the application of remote control solutions for energy storage systems. They will be capable of power supply optimization and balancing at different industrial facilities and in islanded grids. Broad application of energy storage systems will improve power supply reliability of individual consumers and power districts, and will increase the reliability of the functioning of the unified energy system in the future. We plan to continue upgrading the practice of using storage systems in different sectors, including wind power generation,” Grigoriy Nazarov, CEO at NovaWind, pointed out.