The experts of the System Operator gave a ticket to the semi-finals to a team with a hybrid generation project for the South of Russia

The technopark of the North Caucasus Federal University, the partner university of the System Operator, hosted the qualifying stage of the Student League of the XIV International Engineering CASE-IN Championship in the field of "Electric Power Industry". Teams of NCFU students and its Pyatigorsk branch solved engineering problems on the theme of the new season of the championship – "Technologies of the future".

The expert commission of the qualifying stage was headed by Veronika Bershatskaya, a specialist in the electrical modes service of the UDE of the South, a former winner of the CASE-IN championship of the IX season of 2021 and an active participant in the youth council of the System Operator #SOzvedie.

Undergraduate students of 2-3 courses in the field of Electric Power Engineering presented their projects to the experts – a total of 11 teams from the parent university and a branch from Pyatigorsk.

"The International CASE-IN Engineering Championship is a unique opportunity to go beyond the university curriculum and truly immerse yourself in the real processes of the industry. Working in a team on live engineering tasks, students not only deepen their professional knowledge, but also learn to clearly formulate ideas, confidently present solutions and defend their position in front of the expert community. These skills will certainly become an important advantage in the career of each participant of the championship," said Candidate of Technical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Automated Electric Power Systems and Power Supply, Acting Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Oil and Gas Engineering for Educational Work at the opening ceremony of the championship. Dmitry Kostyukov.

According to the results of the project evaluation, the NCFU team called EnergoVector became the winner of the qualifying stage, with a ticket to the semi-finals. In their case, the students presented ideas for improving the electricity supply in the Krasnodar Territory and the Republic of Adygea, where electricity consumption and peak loads are increasing from year to year.

"This year, the teams' solutions were quite original and differed from each other not only in the breadth of technology choices, but also in the geography of the proposed solutions: various regional energy systems from the Krasnodar Territory to the Republic of Tuva were considered. The EnergoVector team has focused on solving the problem of energy shortage Krasnodar Territory and the Republic of Adygea, having proposed a project for the construction of a GPU and a mini-NPP. The combination of traditional generation and unique small modular fast neutron reactors, confident performance and answers to experts' questions led the team to victory," said the chairman of the expert commission. Veronika Bershatskaya.

NCFU has been hosting the championship since 2015, and it is not the first time that university teams have made it to the finals of the competition, showing decent results. In 2024 and 2025, students became finalists and CASE-IN winners in the field of Electric Power Engineering.

The International Engineering CASE-IN Championship is a system of competitions for solving engineering cases for schoolchildren, students and young specialists in the fuel and energy and mineral resource complexes, the nuclear industry and related industries. The championship is included in the platform of ANO "Russia – the land of opportunities" and is included in the initiative "Science to win" and the plan of the Decade of Science and Technology.

The support of the International Engineering CASE-IN Championship is part of the career guidance activities of the System Operator among students and schoolchildren. Based on the materials and with the participation of the company's specialists, qualifying and final cases of the championship in the field of "Electric Power Industry" are being developed, the championship stages are held at the company's partner universities, representatives of the System Operator act as experts for both the qualifying stages of the championship and the final of the competition.

A source