Prospects for using renewable energy sources at medium- and large-sized agricultural production enterprises

Currently, in Russia it is hardly possible to find a rural area or settlement where there is no centralized power supply system. At the same time, it should be noted that rural power supply systems have a significant share in the country's electric grid economy. Analysis of the causes of emergency power outages for agricultural consumers shows that the highest percentage of outages falls on 6-10 kV and 0,4 kV power transmission lines, which are a weak link in the power supply system of the agroindustrial complex. The article analyzes agricultural production consumers of electricity and assesses the categorization of power supply. There have been considered the methods of reserving agricultural facilities that have high requirements for the reliability of power supply. There have been also considered the periods of time during the day with the greatest number of failures and their causes. Data on the duration of such failures are provided. It is shown that only a small part of process lines requires reliable power supply of the first and second categories. There has been made an assumption confirmed by calculations, that electrochemical batteries being recharged from renewable energy sources can be effectively used in backup voltage sources. Block diagrams of recharging backup electrochemical batteries from photovoltaic converters and wind power plants are presented. It is shown that renewable energy sources, in addition to backup power supply for consumers of the first and second categories, can also be used for other needs of agricultural production. It is noted that electrochemical batteries allow reserving power supply in a very short time, unlike fuel power plants currently available at farms. It has been established that the capacity of renewable energy converters can be an order of magnitude less than the capacity of the reserved consumer of electricity.