Results
The Energy Efficiency Cluster participants are now working on projects involving the:
The mission of the Skolkovo Foundation is to create favorable conditions for the development of entrepreneurship and research, to support competitive high-tech developments. Having leading Russian and foreign industrial companies as partners means creating an effective ecosystem that attracts new start-ups and provides them with a clear strategy for technological development and a vision of commercialisation through working with partners.
Mihail Tykuchinskiy, Director of Development at Energy Efficiency Cluster
39 large industrial companies - partners of our Cluster - decided to establish their R&D centers at Skolkovo.
Today over 114 production companies have already become partners of the Skolkovo Foundation, which means they signed an agreement about establishing their R&D centers in Skolkovo. The complete list can be found at:http://sk.ru/foundation/energy/partners/.
Out of 22 new companies awarded with the status of Foundation Partner in 2018, 9 companies are directly related with Cluster’s technological areas: Polycell NPO: a drilling muds specialist. Their product range includes over 100 original compositions, with the annual production about 21,000 tons. The new compositions of drilling muds will be developed on the basis of the partner center.
In 2018 Skolkovo was a platform for effective cooperation between start-ups and the leading Russian and global companies in Fuel & Energy Complex, government agencies.
Just within the Energy Efficiency Cluster over 40 pitch-session for start-ups were held by companies such as: Gazprom Neft, Severstal, NLMK, OMK, Elmont, Rosseti, Sevcabel and others. Several dozens of start-ups are being successfully introduced in the Russian and international representative offices of the partners of the Cluster.
The Annual Project Accelerator “Energy Breakthrough” was carried out with participation of industrial companies (together with Rosseti) and the Build Up accelerator program was launched.
The Build up Accelerator Program was established by the Skolkovo Foundation together with the leading Russian property developers: Gals-Development, DonStroy and FODD. The goal is to find, select and rapidly deploy the best technologies offered by start-ups and aimed at increasing the pace and reducing the cost of construction, improving efficiency of property items operation, improving safety and the quality of life for the inhabitants. The 15 best projects will be subject to a free-of-charge intensive acceleration program to improve the offered technologies and creating the best business model for the technology/product to be applied at real-life construction sites.
Support for R&D centers of the companies, launching accelerator programs and assistance in defining the companies’ strategic goals and operational patterns to interact with the innovative environment are among the Cluster’s priorities for 2019.
What we want is to arrange the best conditions to enable the commercial success for the solutions offered by Skolkovo participants and offering the best technologies to our partners.
During the past 3 years it’s been the Smart Digital Electric and Transport Networks that were broadly promoted within the Skolkovo ecosystem.
What was the main progress achieved by our power men in Power Generation Industry over the past years?
The trial run periods for innovative products were significantly reduced even within this industry, which is conservative at its core. Those who tried it, know that it used to take 2-3 years for a new product/service to pass the trial run with the existing TSO company.
Thanks to the joint effort of our participants, Skolkovo Foundation and companies from Rosseti, subsidiary IDGCs, Mobile GTPPs, Eurosibenergo, Rosatom, Russian Agency for Control Systems, ENEL, SchneiderElectric, EZOIS etc it has now become possible to check the viability of your innovative product within 6 calendar months. To have the acknowledgement that your deliverables are in commercial demand before launching resource-consuming process of putting into production and obtaining product certification. Another alternative may be to ‘tune’ your product to have it customized to the needs of the customers.
It was the sixth time we had the annual program aimed at project search and acceleration with Rosseti. In the context of “Energy Breakthrough” project we made a team of over 130 industry experts - TSO’s engineers - to assess the project base consisting of over 1,400 projects.
Annually 15-20 startups are subject to pre-acceleration in cooperation with mentors, engineers from Rosseti. 5 winners annually proceed to the pilot operation stage. Bottom line: 18 projects are at the pilot-industrial operation stage at Rosseti facilities, 11 projects were enabled with Skolkovo grants, 19 products are being launched into operation and bring significant savings for Rosseti. The revenue of Skolkovo participants who passed through “Energy Breakthrough” project accelerator, exceeded 180 mln roubles. If calculated for the six months of 2018, this amount exceeds 210 mln roubles. These are the first steps in the market for just 15 startups. The project accelerator is expected to be extended in 2019.
Anton Skibin, Head of electricity, energy storage, hydrogenium technologies, green transport streams
What’s new going on in the field of transport?
I think it’s quite obvious for anybody: more and more new, smaller-sized mobility types arise - bike leasing, scooter leasing, now electrically driven scooters have invaded the city streets. Skolkovo, Moscow, Helsinki, California, Paris, Novosibirsk, Sochi - broad geographic outreach for scooter-sharing shows the brilliant prospects for start-ups in this area, including Russian - Skolkovo-originated startups. By the way, some of the projects in this field in 2018 became the most rapidly growing start-ups in the US history, with the market valuation having reached the point of several billions USD during just 1.5-2 years. Skolkovo start-up SamocatSharing is staying abreast, even ahead of them, in some areas.
Ecological aspects of urban transport also raises much concern. Moscow is not lagging behind - first hundreds of environmentally-friendly electric buses have been operating in the city since 2018, the beginning was rather unpretentious - just one KAMAZ electrobus serving a popular route: Skolkovo - Slavyansky boulevard already in 2015.
Driverless buses are coming soon as well. Since summer 2018 unmanned taxis and buses run inside the Skolkovo territory. We keep running and testing those transport vehicles.
We are moving on and on - together with our partner, NP GLONASS, we have launched a large co-project. We’ll be working on a Skolkovo Intelligent Transportation System aimed at managing economical aspects of interaction between passengers - buses - automobiles - scooters - road crossings - traffic lights - parking lots - electromobile charging stations. And I’m sure we’ll find something new for enhancing the comfort of transportation in Russian cities.
Some events last-year which appear interesting for the power sector community in Skolkovo:
Skolkovo and North-Western IDGCs
Skolkovo and NP GLONASS
Skolkovo and Central Region IDGCs
Skolkovo and Schneider Electric
Sun-wings scooter
Skolkovo and Rosseti
Skolkovo at CIGRE in Paris
RT-Soft in Skolkovo
Enel in Skolkovo
Driverless taxi in Skolkovo
Scooter-sharing in Skolkovo
Every year the number of participants in the Oil&Gas Sector of Skolkovo Foundation keeps growing by over 25% and it has almost reached 130 member companies. In 2018 three separate fields within the O&G Sector were established: Geologic Exploration, Wells Operation & Production, Oil Refinery and Petrochemistry. Increasing the number of project team members allowed for better focus on the support of the participants in meeting their priority challenges – from fund raising to entering foreign markets. It is noteworthy that among the newly joined participants some companies were established by the teams of projects which are already in progress within the Skolkovo business environment – those teams are not only successfully working on their current projects, but keep moving forward and offer more new technologies to the market. We do enjoy watching our participants demonstrating excellent business results.
Maxim Bardin, Head of Acceleration in Oil and Gas Sector
One more thing to be happy about facing the New Year is the rapid growth of cooperation with key domestic O&G companies. It is not an exaggeration to say that the number of Russian VIOCs representatives who visited Skolkovo, and the number of their personal meetings with our innovation-makers in 2018 has exceeded the equivalent figures for the preceding three years of cooperation between the Foundation and domestic O&G industry players.
We are entering 2019, on the one hand, with the plans to keep the level of efficiency demonstrated by the results of cooperation with the Russian oil industry, and, on the other hand, we are pushing to make a quantum leap to enhance our capabilities to support the Skolkovo participants entering the foreign markets. We have done much of preparatory work this year;we made a series of successful visits to China, Kazakhstan, the Middle East and the USA. In the coming year we are going to strengthen our positions and expand our geographical outreach in these markets, besides, we are going to enhance our capabilities in the markets of, at least, Canada and South East Asia.
In 2018 we mainly focused on increasing the number of start-ups in the Energy Efficient Technologies portfolio, boosting their revenues, fund raising, acceleration of transition from the development stage to commercialization stage (+30%- the increase of the number of projects in our portfolio, +22%- the increase in revenues of the participants as compared with 2017).
All participating start-ups get an access to all services within the Skolkovo environment:
Revenues received by the start-ups are the main indicator of our performance. During 2018 this indicator demonstrated a 22%increase.
The portfolio of ‘Industry’ projects within Energy Efficiency Cluster includes several segments:
Such sectors as ‘Digital technologies for industrial application’ and ‘Materials and Coatings’ showed the most potential for development. Using external investments (from Skolkovo Foundation and other investors) and systematic cooperation with the Foundation the participating start-ups have successfully completed trial runs for their products and are getting ready for a full-scale launch to the industrial applications market. Participating start-ups with the ‘ready-for-market’ products in the context of the acceleration program are developing their business models and scaling their sales both for domestic and foreign markets.
We want our segments to grow not only in terms of quantity indicators, but in terms of quality as well: emerging new technologies to meet the specific needs of the market, increased maturity of the start-ups - more participants who managed to proceed with the industrial launch stage for their products. To illustrate the above, in the “Digital technologies for industrial applications”cluster we have new participants that joined - teams working in the field of predictive analytical methods for process equipment, and in the field of process digitalization in metallurgical and chemical industries, and the sector itself doubled. The number of projects in “Materials and Coatings” cluster has also doubled. One of our long-standing participants - Technologies of Mineral Coatings LLC - which is developing new coatings under Micotech trade mark, this year is going to enter European and American market with our support. In the ‘Energy efficient machinery, plants and equipment’ sector we also have a new participant - Reinnolz Labs LLC, a company showing a great potential in the heat exchangers market. Rotary Piston Compressorsand RUS Mare at the final stage of development to prepare their products for market launch. The Metals & Mining cluster includes a range of innovative projects for the metallurgical industry - from raw materials extraction to the finished product stage. In 2018 Trubmetprom STC completed the development and testing of automated pipeline cleaning systems (the project was implemented with participation of Skolkovo Foundation and SMS Group Gmbh (Germany), the sales are expected to start in 2019. Some companies from this sector are now at the stage of fund raising to have their products finalized to proceed with the pilot production stage.
In the opinion of the Energy Efficiency Cluster participants, one of the key factors for selecting this cluster is an opportunity to keep in touch with the major players in the Russian industrial sector, power generation industry and other sectors of economy. In 2018 our participants could take part in the pitch-sessions with the leaders of the metallurgical industry, mechanical engineering industry, power generation and construction, and we put our cooperation with the corporations to a new systematic level in order to help our start-ups at testing, pilot production and market launch stages. The most interesting projects with active teams got an opportunity to have personal meetings with the top managers of the largest corporations - their potential customers (and later on mentorship). Those teams also have access to other important resources of the Cluster to enable faster growth and development. In promoting this segment we are planning to build the environment for the start-ups to meet the key needs of the corporations in the field of improving the production performance.
Energy efficiency is an excellent performance indicator and growth driver for any company. The most important conclusion which the world industry leaders and consumers came to during the recent years is that well-managed energy efficiency policy does work and brings significant output. Focus on energy efficiency issues helps to: reduce costs for all types of resources, increase the equipment utilization efficiency (for other assets as well), improve energy safety, solve environmental issues.
Technology innovations offer new opportunities for increasing the performance efficiency of industrial enterprises. Digitalization has become a key factor for the efficiency increase and is a leader among other innovative trends in terms of growth rate. Business models used by various companies are customized to survive in the digital energy world.
New materials and coatings offer impressive new opportunities when being integrated in process flows at all production stages.
Logistics and Transportation is the major costs center for many enterprises, so innovative solutions applied in this field help to release a huge potential for improvements.
Integrated solutions, where the energy efficient innovations, artificial intelligence and new business models work together, offer the customers the most benefit at the lowest price. That was the reason why we created our integrated project “Energy Efficiency for industrial applications” - a package of offerings which are the most appealing for the market in such sectors as “Materials and Coatings”, “Machinery and Equipment”, “Digital Technologies for industrial applications”, “Metals & Mining”.
We have made a clear structure of our start-ups project portfolio to enable the companies to easily find and use innovative solutions in the basic improvement areas: power generation, machinery, buildings and installations, logistics and transportation. To make navigation among innovative offerings easier, in 2019 we are planning to launch a supermarket of innovative technologies for industrial applications on the basis of our web-site. It’s going to be a multi-purpose online search engine where any employee can find a suitable solution and relevant information.
A broad network of contacts helps us to track throughout the world more and more examples of effective application of energy efficiency policies, so we attract more attention to the best practices to let our participants share their experience and learn from each other.
This was the main reason why we are building our single platform for exchanging the best practices in energy efficiency to help users make the best decision in business and operational activities.
Alla KrysanovaHead of Acceleration, Head of Industry Unit+ (495) 956 00 33, ext 3359
Evgeny BuldakovIndustry Project Manager+ (495) 956 00 33, ext 2310
Urban Technologies is one of the most rapidly growing sectors in Skolkovo. Currently over 100 innovative companies are working on implementation of their projects in this field. For the last 3 years about 25-30 new companies have become the Skolkovo participants, which made it possible to triple the number of start-ups within the same period and offer a well-balanced portfolio of innovative projects with a potential for application in all areas of urban economy.
The bottom line demonstrated by those companies proved that the technology solutions offered by start-ups are in demand in the market, which caused the five-fold increase of the revenue from the project portfolio and it accounted for 2 billion roubles per annum. Moreover, innovative companies in Urban Technologies Sector are active participants of the major domestic and international industry exhibitions where they spark rather broad interest from the professional communities and find new customers for their products.
Yury Khakhanov, Director for Projects Development.
Recently, new technology areas emerged and were actively developed, including smart city and smart home systems, 3D-printing for construction industry, safety systems etc. To illustrate the successful application of those technologies we can give the following examples: Lakhta Center, the largest among the office buildings in Europe, was equipped with smart office systems; a construction 3D-printer was used to ‘print’ a residential house and an office building which are also the largest in Europe.
With the support of Skolkovo Urban Technologies Manager, the territory of our Innovation Center has become the site for pilot run and full-scale implementation of the ‘ready-for-market’ solutions of specialized start-ups at Skolkovo infrastructure facilities. In this context the most ambitious projects were the introduction of smart home systems inside all residential blocks, deployment of the smart city platform in Dispatch and Monitoring Center, installation of air purification and disinfection systems in the Skolkovo Gymnasium etc.
2018 became a milestone for the industry programs of the corporate acceleration projects. The pilot industry accelerator Build UP was launched to be used by the leading companies in the construction and property development markets. Build UP will include finding, selecting and rapid deployment of the best technologies offered by start-ups and aimed at increasing the pace and reducing the cost of construction, improving efficiency of property items operation, improving safety and the quality of life for the inhabitants of the residential blocks built by the companies.