The qualifying round of the International Engineering Case-in Championship in the Electric Power Industry League took place in Samara. Four undergraduates from Samara State Technical University (SamSTU) studying under the specialized training program of JSC SO UES, as well as two young specialists from the Branch of JSC SO UES Samara RDU Students continuing their studies at the graduate and postgraduate courses of SamSTU were part of the teams that took first and second places. The winners of the regional stage will represent the Samara region in the final of the Case-in championship in May 2016 in Moscow.
The system operator acts as a partner of the championship in the Electric Power Industry League and provides its own materials for the cases used in the tasks. The company's specialists are also on the jury of the qualifying stage of the competition. In total, 77 qualifying stages will be held in 2016 as part of the Case-in championship, which will be attended by 3,000 students from 38 specialized universities from more than 30 regions of Russia, as well as Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Teams of 2-4 people from among students, undergraduates and postgraduates of universities are formed to participate in the championship. During the qualifying stages, teams of undergraduates and postgraduates must solve engineering cases developed based on materials from leading industry companies in five areas (leagues): "Electric power industry", "Mining", "Geological exploration", "Oil and gas business", "Metallurgy".
The first experience of holding such competitions at SamSTU was acquired in 2015. Eleven student teams participated in the regional selection this year. The guys were tasked with developing their own reasonable option for the reconstruction of heat and power supply in a remote Zabaikalsky village from the power grid, to the worn-out grids of which the factory under construction plans to connect.
The results of the team performances were evaluated by an expert commission, which included teachers of SamSTU, representatives of the energy companies of the region - a branch of JSC SO UES ODE of the Middle Volga, branch of PJSC FGC UES of the Volga MEA and CJSC Group of Companies-Electroshield-TM Samara. According to the results of the regional stage, the solution of the case was recognized as the best by the Idea Generator team, consisting of Mikhail Kritsky, a graduate student at SamSTU, Alexander Lesnikov, a graduate student participating in the specialized training program at SO UES, Diana Rumanova, and Daria Trifonova, a 4th-year student at the Faculty of Economics. The second place was taken by the EPZ 1636 team, which included SamSTU undergraduates participating in the specialized training program of JSC SO UES, intern specialists from the Middle Volga and Samara RDU Alexander Shchobak, Alexander Rakhaev and Viktor Dolginin.
According to the materials System Operator