Smart Sensors Help Prevent Thousands of Heating Network Failures in St. Petersburg
City authorities plan to install thousands more acoustic monitoring devices in 2026.
In St. Petersburg, smart sensors have helped prevent more than 2,000 failures in district heating networks. In 2026, the city plans to install thousands of additional acoustic devices. Using these systems, utilities in Russia’s northern capital have already prevented 2,004 technical disruptions in heat supply networks, the city’s Committee for Energy said.
The monitoring system has been in operation since 2020. A total of 3,820 devices are currently installed across the network, covering more than 1,000 kilometers of pipelines. The sensors monitor the condition of the infrastructure around the clock. They measure noise levels created when the flow of heat-transfer fluid interacts with the pipe walls. If the signal deviates from the norm, the sensors can accurately determine the location and timing of a defect.
Detecting Weak Points
All collected information is transmitted to a central server, where specialized software analyzes the data before sending it to the computers of engineers and dispatch operators.
The system has proven effective. Of the 2,015 weak points identified, only 11 defects could not be addressed in advance because they developed too rapidly.
Authorities plan to expand the monitoring system and upgrade its analytical tools in the future, which should make the city’s heating infrastructure more reliable. In 2026, another 1,000 acoustic sensors are scheduled to be installed on pipelines.
Earlier reports described how a digital scanner is helping protect heating networks in Izhevsk from major failures.
