Despite all the conditions of a complicated 2020, the VIII Distributed Power Generation — Great Achievements International Award has not only taken place, but, undoubtedly, has become the most significant and breakthrough in the history of the competition project. The award has not only collected a record number of applications (91 applications from Russia, Austria and the Republic of Belarus), but also under the conditions of a pandemic and restrictions on holding mass events, it has taken place as a very bright and high-quality industry event.

For the first time in the history of the competition, the Golden Lightning ceremony has been held in a hybrid format: offline (at the most prestigious venue of the capital, in the Congress Center of the RF Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and online (about 4,000 people watched the broadcast of the ceremony).

The key achievements of the Award-2020:

• The ceremony at the Congress Center of the RF Chamber of Commerce and Industry has been attended by over 60 representatives of competing companies and experts from different regions of Russia.
• More than 4,000 people watched the ceremony online on all the platforms. And the number of views continues to grow.
• During the ceremony, besides offline presentations, experts from Germany, France, Austria, Belarus, as well as from Novosibirsk, Kazan, Magadan, and the Amur Region got in direct contact with the Congress Center.
• We have expanded not only the number of audiences, but also geographic boundaries.
• We awarded 7 Golden Lightning and 27 Golden certificates for the best projects of small-scale distributed power generation.
• But in addition to 7 Golden Lightnings, the event was also decorated with 7 kinetic sculptures by Nikolai Panafidin. Within the frames of the Solemn ceremony of the VIII Distributed Power Generation — Great Achievements the Energy of Art exhibition of kinetic objects was organized.

But the ceremony is just a beautiful culmination of a complex, large project, which has reached many other important peaks this year. The Organizing Committee of the Competition has expanded the Expert Council: it now includes Kristina Haverkamp, Managing Director at German Energy Agency (dena); Andrey Pokhozhaev, Senior Managing director of RES Investment Division at RUSNANO MC LLC; Alexander Starchenko, Chairman of the Association of Energy Consumers Supervisory Board; Anton Usachev, Director of Association of Solar Power Enterprises NPP; Sergei Semyonov, Director of Energy Efficiency and Sustainability in Russia and CIS at Schneider Electric.

The Organazing Committee of the Award has got a significant support from the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Energy of the Moscow Region and other government agencies. The Award collected a record number of applications (91). We have launched an electronic system for collecting applications for the first time. And for the finals, Public online voting has been launched, which once again proved how many followers small-scale distributed power generation has: more than 1 million visits to the site during 2 weeks, over 300 thousand votes.

Ceremony resolutions: 1. Further development of the Award-2020; 2. Replication of the best industry practices and advanced Russian and foreign experience presented as part of the Award-2020; 3. Bringing the competition project to the international level.