The Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company (a part of the Rosatom’s Electric Power division) will shortly start developing a new line of business – managing the demand of retail consumers for electric power. Alexander Khvalko, the deputy CEO and the Sales director of the largest power generation company in Russia, made this announcement when summarizing the outcomes of a successful full-scale experiment on managing the demand of retail consumers for electric power.

The experiment was held in 2018 by AO ‘AtomEnergoSbyt’ and ‘System Operator’, an affiliate company of the Rosenergoatom JSC, acting as an aggregator for managing the demand. The full-scale experiment has demonstrated that various types of retail consumers, that is, companies operating in multiple industries, can effectively manage their power consumption. Several companies took part in the experiment, including those in agriculture, steelmaking, manufacturing, ship maintenance, car maintenance, a crushed stone plant, a hotel complex, and several housing and utilities infrastructure businesses.

During the experiment, consumers from the Murmansk, Smolensk and Kursk regions along with the System operator and Atomenergosbyt were exchanging notifications on consumption reduction for the scheduled hours and time lines and facilitated the necessary consumption reduction at the set time. The consumption reduction was scheduled at randomly picked hours among the peak ones in the energy systems. Sometimes it resulted into increased consumption at other times, which totally makes sense since managing the demand is not equal to energy efficiency or mere consumption reduction.

According to Alexander Khvalko, the deputy CEO and the Sales director of the Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company, the emergence of the demand management technology introduces a new page in the history of electric power. ‘This is the first time we have all the prerequisites for a consumer to be able to make a real impact on the energy system balance and take part in the market operation optimization by redistributing their consumption. However, while being a power generation company, Rosenergoatom plans to further develop the demand management offering. By reducing the load during the peak hours, the consumers redistribute this load from the peak time into the basic schedule, which improves the efficiency of the electric power production by the nuclear power plants and the power system in general. If we combine this with the right digital solution, we make it more realistic to win a good share of this market that will be measured in billions of dollars in the next years’.

In the meantime, Petr Konyushenko, the CEO of AO AtomEnergoSbyt, said: ‘The utilities companies can play an important role as a demand management aggregator. We know each and every consumer, and we are aware of their capabilities in terms of changing the load schedule, we know their electric power consumption history. Nowadays, we are among the pioneers to test the waters with retail consumers’ demand management technology. During the pilot projects we will also start doing technological consulting for the consumers, refine the electric power tracking systems, establish the algorithms and the facilities for consumers’ load aggregation, including the household customers. This new line of business will become a natural extension of our company’s digitalization strategy’.

The experiment has become the largest among those organized by ‘System Operator’ and has demonstrated that the electric power industry is fully ready for the introduction of the demand management system.

The experiment itself marked the cooperation within the AO ‘SO of the Unified Power Grid’, the AO ‘Rosenergoatom Joint-Stock Company’ and the AO ‘AtomEnergoSbyt’ working group on the electric power demand management technology (price responsive consumption) at the retail market and the first practical outcome of the AO ‘SO of the Unified Power Grid’ and the Rosseti PJSC working group cooperation.