Published on: 2026-05-04
Source: Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University of Peter the Great –
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The annual international scientific and practical conference for students, postgraduate students, young scientists and researchers “Modern Technologies and Energy Economics” (STEE) took place remotely. The event united leading representatives of the scientific community of Russia and abroad at its venue for the ninth time. The conference was organized by Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University of Peter the Great, Belarusian National Technical University, and Kazan State Energy University.Partnership ties, secured by agreements on cooperation, allowed not only to preserve the traditional scale of the event, but also to expand the circle of participants.
A feature of this year was a significant strengthening of international presence. In addition to the host countries, representatives from universities of China, Cameroon (University of Yaoundé), Uzbekistan (Bukhara and Tashkent universities), Kazakhstan (Karaganda Technical University), as well as researchers from Pakistan, took part in the conference.
For the first time this year, three articles from Cameroon have come to us. We have cooperation agreements, and I hope that they will become our permanent participants, since we have many directions related to the sectoral economy and technical issues, ” noted the conference moderator.
A total of more than 120 articles were submitted for consideration by the organizing committee. The conference’s work was organized according to five thematic sections, which allowed covering the entire spectrum of modern challenges in the energy sector. The most popular was the section “Economics and Management in Energy” (32 articles), followed by “Energy-efficient Technologies” (29 articles), “Modern Aspects of Thermal and Nuclear Energy” (20 articles), “IT Technologies in Energy” (14 articles), and “Hydrogen Energy” (11 articles).
The first vice-rector of SPbPU, Vitaly Sergeev, addressed the participants with a welcoming word. He emphasized the importance of the established tradition of cooperation, noting that the conference has long outgrown the format of a simple exchange of reports.
In essence, many topics of the reports are a good basis for joint project activities, for preparing scientific publications and grant applications, Vitaliy Sergeev said.
In his speech, the first rector touched on the global agenda: changes in economic models in energy, revaluation of the value of technologies, and the role of universities as generators of ideas for states. Special attention was given to the new national project of technological leadership of the Russian Federation “Bioeconomy.”
The title doesn’t seem to be directly about energy, but if you look inside, most of the project is precisely related to what to do with energy resources, what leverage points there should be. The international experience of forming this policy — where the focus is on atomic energy, where on hydrogen, where on coal — is extremely important, noted the speaker.
At the conference, a number of promising ideas for practical implementation were presented. For example, it was proposed to use energy storage systems (ESS) together with demand-side management mechanisms (DSM) to balance the uneven generation of VRE and the base power of NPPs: modeling showed that this approach reduces the operation of peak gas turbine plants by 35.8% and decreases the load on TPPs by 30–40%.An interesting idea of integrating data centers into centralized heating systems: low-potential waste heat can be utilized with the help of heat pumps, replacing inefficient generation sources and reducing tariff load. For heat exchange equipment, analytical methods for determining the safe operating limits of non-Newtonian fluids have been proposed, allowing to prevent thermal explosion without costly numerous experiments.Finally, a comprehensive domestic methodology has been developed for hydrogen refueling stations (RBI analysis + machine learning + CFD modeling), which increases diagnostic accuracy up to 90–95%, reduces leak response time to 2–5 minutes, and guarantees operability at –40 °C. All these solutions can significantly improve the reliability and efficiency of the energy infrastructure.
The STEE-2026 conference once again confirmed its status as an authoritative discussion platform. The working languages were Russian and English, which provided a comfortable environment for all foreign guests. The organizers expressed their readiness to adjust the names of the sections in the future depending on the requests of the scientific community, noting the stable popularity of all directions.
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