Young inventors of the fraternal school – winners of the International Engineering Championship "CASE-IN"

11th graders of the fraternal school No. 18 Ariana Yakovkina and Victor Mazur won the School League of the International Engineering Championship "CASE-IN" in the nomination "Creation of a technical device". The guys became the authors of the device, which has no analogues yet on the world market of equipment for "green energy". Their hardware and software package makes it possible to increase the efficiency of small-capacity solar power plants by 2.4 times. The high school students worked on their project at the Severnaya Zvezda Student Design Bureau under the guidance of an associate professor at the Department of Energy at Bratsk State University Anatoly Strumelyak.

As told by the Dean of the Faculty of Energy and Automation of Bratsk State University Tatiana Yakovkina, the University's teaching staff has been successfully cooperating with students who are passionate about science for more than 6 years.

The young inventors chose the research topic themselves, and in just 3 months they managed to literally produce from scratch a workable hardware and software package for testing algorithms for finding the maximum power point of EPA photovoltaic converters. The essence of the problem that the students managed to solve is that the maximum power point on the solar cells is constantly changing depending on the position of the sun in the sky, the level of illumination, air temperature and other factors. And the new controller allows you to track its movement, thereby increasing the power of the power plant. The development has been successfully tested at the solar power plant of the university base on Burnina Island.

"Such controllers exist, but they are made for high-capacity power plants. But this invention is for low–power power plants, up to about 500 watts. That is, if a person wanted to install a solar power plant in a country house, in a hunting lodge, or at a campsite, it would be problematic for him to purchase high–capacity equipment. Or here in our experimental forestry on Burnina Island, there is no way to extend an overhead power supply line there, so there is a low–power solar power plant there. In addition, the controllers that exist do not provide for increasing capacity – after the construction of the power plant, you will not be able to expand it. And this development allows you to do this. It is enough to install a couple more solar panels with solar cells and connect a second similar controller – and everything works., - said the Dean of the Faculty of Energy and Automation. - But the most important thing is that the controller allows you to squeeze the maximum possible out of the solar panels. There are quite a lot of solar power plants on sale now, but experts are struggling to increase their efficiency – it is very small. Manufacturers claim 20%, but in fact it does not exceed 16%. And if you remove the existing controller from an existing solar power plant and install our own, then, as tests have shown, you can get 2.4 times more electricity from the same panels. In addition, it is manufactured on a relatively cheap domestic element base. And the algorithms were modified in the program itself, they brought their own vision to it."   

According to Tatiana Yakovkina, the cost of developing young inventors is about 1,200 rubles. This is slightly more than the cost of the Chinese controller purchased for the experiment, but the payback period for the novelty is much shorter. It is worth noting that such equipment is not manufactured in Russia.  

Ariana and Victor, or the Filii Helios team, also took 2nd place at the Exhibition of Scientific and Technical developments "Energy of the Future", held as part of the International Youth Scientific Conference "Tinchurin Readings-2022 "Energy and Digital Transformation" on the basis of Kazan State Energy University.

"If representatives of the production showed interest in this development, which could benefit Russia, among others, we would be happy to cooperate.,   - says Tatiana Yakovkina. – Because last year we carried out calculations for the Agul Lake Nature Reserve, located in the Nizhneudinsky district. There is a cordon there, which is provided with electricity by diesel generators. Fuel for them is delivered by packhorses, because there is no road, or by snowmobile in winter. The fuel ran out– the employees had no phone, no computer, and nothing else. And so we calculated a low-power solar power plant for 4 houses, and the maximum power point controller would be very useful there. There are plenty of such examples, take for example our overseas villages in the Bratsk region - Naratai, Ozerny and so on, there are also diesel generators there, because it is expensive to pull an overhead line. Or there are small camp sites on the shores of Lake Baikal, where tourism is developing. The sales market is gorgeous, despite the cheap energy in the Irkutsk region!"

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