The Gomelenergo team took the second place in the League of Young Specialists of the CIS

The company has created all the conditions so that engineers can adequately represent the country at the competition.

The national team of Gomelenergo consisted of:

- Captain Vladislav Klyuchinsky, Senior engineer of the 8th class power unit of the boiler turbine shop of the Gomel CHPP-2 branch;

- Designer Dmitry Pavlyuk, Master of Relay Protection and Electrical Automation at the Zhlobinsky Electric Networks branch;

- Idea Generator Alexander Kovalenko - Head of the Northern District of Heating Networks of the Gomel Thermal Networks branch;

- Strategist Anton Vashchilov, Head of the Production and Technical Department of the Mozyr TPP branch.

ABOUT THE TOURNAMENT

14 teams of young power engineers took part in the competition. These are the winners and prize-winners of the national qualifying stages from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. The final took place on the site of the Youth Day of the international forum "Russian Energy Week" in Moscow.

The championship has been held since 2013, and in 2019 it entered the top 15 Olympiads in the world according to the rating agency RAEX. During this period, more than 20 thousand students, young professionals and schoolchildren took part in the event. "CASE-IN" helps to increase the level of knowledge, as well as creates an opportunity for the exchange of ideas and international interaction with other specialists, popularizes engineering professions. By the way, the international League of Young Professionals was held for the first time this year. 

The best engineering minds presented to the expert commission optimal scenarios for the low-carbon development of the electric power industry based on environmentally neutral technologies. At the same time, it was necessary to offer not an existing solution, but something new and unique. It is important that all the projects of the participants should be applicable to the energy systems of their countries, said Ruslan Vegera, Deputy General Director for Energy Sales at RUE Gomelenergo.

ABOUT THE PREPARATION

The training of the team was organized on the basis of the Training Center of RUE Gomelenergo. The heads of departments and services of the central office provided all possible assistance. The company has created all the conditions so that young engineers can adequately represent the country at the championship. Surprisingly, the guys did not know each other before participating in the competition. The HR Department has compiled a list of young, active and promising specialists who clearly show themselves as engineers. The contestants came together very quickly, complementing each other. Vladislav Klyuchinsky's thoughts formed the basis of the project. Alexander Kovalenko is the soul of the team, charismatic and creative, easily finds a common language with others. Anton Vashchilov was responsible for the economic part, all calculations, and risks. He is calm, balanced, attentive. The Energy Department of Sukhoi State Technical University and Associate Professor Galina Anatolyevna Rudchenko helped the team with this section. Dmitry Pavlyuk is an experienced fighter. In 2017, he participated in the student league, so now he was responsible for the confidence in the team.

"Constant personnel control made it easy to form a team at the right moment," Ruslan Vegera emphasized. "If we got such a high result the first time, it means we have potential, opportunities, and a decent engineering school."

WHAT IS THE PROJECT ABOUT

The task of the case is to propose the top 3 environmentally neutral technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, reduce the greenhouse effect, and slow down the global warming process. At the same time, it is necessary not only to solve the case, but to economically justify the effectiveness of the proposed solution and the possibility of its implementation in practice.

According to Vladislav Klyuchinsky, in order to find a promising direction for low-carbon energy, the team developed a methodology for evaluating 43 technologies according to 13 criteria. We took into account both the opinions of experts, employees of the enterprise, and neural networks. The low-carbon technologies that scored the most points were selected for implementation in the project. This is a polygeneration plant with anaerobic fermentation, hydrogen electrolysis, and a gravitational energy storage device. By the way, the Gomelenergo team is the only one of the participating teams who resorted to using a neural network in their work, which was separately noted by the jury members.

"We are giving you a dream–" Gomel engineers presented unmanned airships with this wording. Yes, it's still a dream, but it's realistic to realize it. After all, the solutions presented in the draft were based on a scientific basis.

"We understood perfectly well that technology would bring everything. Therefore, in order to get emotionally hooked, they came up with airships," shared Alexander Kovalenko. "They were not the ultimate goal, just part of one of the solutions for transporting hydrogen."

It took six minutes to defend the project. The young people coped with the task with a bang. They spoke clearly and confidently. So much so that the expert commission had no questions.

INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION

According to the results of the championship, the team of Gomel engineers lost only to the hosts of the tournament. The guys noted that for them the second place is more than a victory. It was the first time they had participated in such a competition, and they had gone all the way from scratch. Moreover, the difference between gold and silver was only 0.04 points. By the way, the top three was also rounded out by a team from Belarus – representatives of the republican unitary enterprise Belarusian Thermal Energy Institute.

"I liked this format of working with young people. At the company, we are used to the traditional form of professional development. At the same time, young specialists have a minimal level of motivation, but solving cases makes them step up and process a large amount of information. There is an idea to organize something similar on the basis of a training center. The guys will defend their projects, and we, in turn, will be able to track down interesting ideas and worthy employees," Ruslan Vegera summed up.

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