A panel discussion on the topic “What is the energy of the future?” was held on October 3 within the framework of Russian Energy Week business program. 

Representatives of relevant ministries and departments, heads of leading Russian and global electricity companies, and key industry experts, attended the event.

The participants of the round table tried to give an objective assessment of the long-term development of the Russian energy system, its transition to the “digital rails” and analyzed international progressive experience in the energy and technology markets. 

Yevgeny Grabchak, Director of the Department of operational control and management in the electric power industry of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, spoke about the target vision of the electric power industry of the future. As the main factors determining its effectiveness, he mentioned the need for maximum network consolidation.

“The government, as a shareholder of Rosseti, the largest electric grid company, is interested in extending the applied unified high quality principles to the entire domestic grid complex. Therefore, the Ministry of Energy supports the consolidation process. We need to bring domestic grid complex to a whole new level. We need to create modern digital platforms, where electricity consumers, equipment manufacturers and electric power industry entities such as network and power generation companies will interact,” stressed Yevgeny Grabchak. 

Oleg Barkin, a member of the board and Deputy Management board chairman of Market Council Association, noted in his speech that the future of the energy sector should be considered in a more distant horizon since the industry is primarily based on capital-intensive technologies. At the same time, its development strategies should be framed minding, first of all, its key task - energy supply of consumers' activities. “New technologies for the power production and transmission are emerging nowadays. Consumer requirements are also changing. They are becoming more sensitized to energy cost, to mobility and the speed of its production and transmission,” said Oleg Barkin.

Speaking about global trends industry development, he mentioned the rejection of direct price regulation, the possibility of consumers to use their own power generation sources, and the autonomy of the electricity grid infrastructure.

“Electric grids will enter a competitive environment, as new technologies will lead to changes in both their structure and methods of electric power transmission. They need to remain an inexpensive, convenient, and available infrastructure of power transmission from generation to consumer to remain competitive. This can be achieved through the active introduction of technological innovations. In this regard, the experience of Rosseti, which is implementing a lot of promising pilot projects, is indicative. We have to expand and develop these practices creating conditions for their scaling up and actively involving the expert community,” says Oleg Barkin.

According to Oleg Dubnov, Vice president and Executive director of the Energy efficiency technologies cluster of Skolkovo Foundation, such work is already being carried out in cooperation with the Foundation:

“One of the goals of Skolkovo, as an institute of development and technological support, is to guide startups towards development as accurately as possible, to explain what areas they should work and develop in. Center for Applied Energy Research was established this year with the support of PJSC Rosseti and the Ministry of Energy. Its task is to determine how energy will develop and what technologies will be in demand in the future. It is not only about determining, but also about “piloting” in certain areas. We plan to collect all most advanced and breakthrough technologies and both Russia and foreign developments in various fields, including digitalization, in the Center for Applied Research”.