In Anticipation of a SMART GRID: Professor V.A. Venikov about the Electric Power Industry of the Future

Abstract

The unknown work of V.A. Venikov, an outstanding Soviet electric power scientist, Professor of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (MEI), which was found by the author in the Russian State Archive of Economics, is analyzed. This work is the official note titled «On some problems of the future electric power industry» dated November 1, 1960, which was submitted to the Soviet Union’s State Economic Council.

Using the terminology of that time, Venikov outspoken very farsighted conjectures about the main stages and lines of system integration of the electric power industry, automation and computer facilities, which was long before the current discussions about what should be understood under «Smart Grids». According to his concept, the electrical network should be transformed from a passive device for transporting and distributing electric power into an active system, the parameters and characteristics of which vary depending on the grid operation modes. To this end, all its elements from the generator and transformer to the electricity consumer should be equipped with special sensors for transmitting control pulses from computers to the system actuators, and then, with further improvement of the computer technology, they should be equipped with self-adjusting devices. These latter will adapt the program so as to ensure the best technical and economic effect of the entire system, depending on the system operation conditions analyzed by the computer. In fact, this Venikov’s official note was a prediction of what is nowadays called «artificial intelligence elements», components with which many engineers associate the possibility of developing electric power systems of the next technological generation with unlimited stability and extremely efficient throughput capacity.