ETU “LETI”: Solving City Challenges: St. Petersburg Electric Transport Operator and ETU “LETI” Became Strategic Partners
Denis Minkin, Director of electric transport operator Gorelectrotrans, and Viktor Sheludko, Rector of ETU “LETI,” signed a cooperation agreement. Parties aim to combine and use the experience of the two oldest electrical engineering organizations – the specialized university and the first public transport enterprise in St. Petersburg – for the future development of electric transport.
The agreement focuses on the development of a training system for Gorelectrotrans to provide the company with professionals for the emerging needs of the city’s electric transport. Young specialists should engage in this process now, as the long-term development of Gorelectrotrans is comparable to the service life of vehicles (25-30 years) and includes a possible technological revolution. Therefore, it is today’s youth who will define the transport and the city of the future.
“Gorelectrotrans has a lot of demand for innovations in the engineering of ETU “LETI”: this includes power engineering, automation, and computer science. In my opinion, we are facing a leap forward in the development of electric transport. It has been waiting for this upgrade for a very long time. Nowadays, modern streetcars and trolleybuses are, in general, comparable to an airplane or a submarine: very sophisticated onboard control systems, centralized control systems, telemetry, and, in the future, automatic control systems.”
Denis Minkin, Director of Gorelectrotrans
The strategic partnership implies joint work on career guidance for young people majoring in engineering and the organization of practical training and internships for students at Gorelectrotrans. The company will provide ETU “LETI” with area-specific training materials, assist in the course projects, theses and other research projects of the university’s students.
Managers and specialists of the enterprise will be able to undergo retraining and advanced training at the university. ETU “LETI” actively participated in preparing the Concept of Scientific and Technological Development of St. Petersburg until 2030. A section of this concept is devoted to employing scientific potential to solve the city’s challenges in research, education, breakthrough technologies, and development of the innovative potential of the city’s industry. Signing the agreement with Gorelectrotrans will help the university to solve these tasks.
“We intend to vigorously implement educational programs and research projects. Gorelectrotrans is a huge enterprise, our history of cooperation goes back many years. Today, we signed an agreement and reached a more systematic level of interaction. We plan to jointly develop projects in digital technologies, artificial intelligence, power engineering, and electrical engineering. These are fields in which ETU “LETI” researchers are highly qualified.”
Viktor Sheludko, Rector of ETU “LETI”
Gorelectrotrans, in coordination with the university, will determine the priority areas of joint research, assist in creating effective mechanisms for introducing developments and enhancing innovation. Among these innovations are energy-efficient traction electric drives, efficient conversion of electric power based on electronic components using silicon carbide transistors and other promising materials. The parties also consider the university’s developments in intelligent technologies for driverless transport control, active driver assistance systems, automatic traffic control systems for electric transport, and others to be promising.
It is symbolic that the signing of the agreement took place at the oldest trolleybus depot in the city. To get acquainted with the history of St. Petersburg electric transport, the guests drove around the site on a trolleybus with extended autonomous running.