Hydropower plants of Russia and their energy potential

The further our civilization progresses in its development, the more energy it requires. Now the power is generated by three types of stations: nuclear, thermal and water. Compared to nuclear power plants and thermal power plants, HPPs produce the cheapest electricity, but the construction of hydroelectric power stations is costly enough expensive. Particularly problematic is the construction of hydroelectric power stations on European rivers - European land is expensive, and flooding a large enough area is sometimes impossible. In Russia, the hydropower plant has a completely different problem - seasonality. In winter, when rivers are in ice, the hydroelectric power plants are idle.

Russia's hydropower plants are divided into two types. The first includes stations built on large flat rivers, and stations of the second type are built on mountain rivers. Most of the Russian hydropower plants are built on the plains, although in Europe such stations are considered unprofitable. This decision by Russian power engineers was made for the sake of good irrigation of the lands adjoining the HPP.

As is known, the work of any hydroelectric power station is based on the principle of converting the kinetic energy of falling water streams into electrical energy. There are, however, some nuances according to which the HPPs of Russia are divided into three varieties.

Hydroelectric stations for generating electricity use special hydraulic structures, which create the necessary water pressure. The transformation of energy occurs in turbines, where the kinetic energy becomes mechanical, and only after that - electrical. Such hydropower plants in Russia, in general, are built on slow, flat rivers.

Tidal stations are a special type of hydropower plant. They are built on the shores of the seas and use the pressure of tides to generate electricity. The construction of such stations is expensive, the electricity in them is not produced constantly, but only with tides or tides, so there are very few tidal power plants in Russia.

The third type includes pumped storage stations. These stations generate electricity by pumping some water between tanks of the same volume, with one reservoir located below another. At night, the water is pumped to the upper reservoir, and in the afternoon it descends from there to the lower pool. The resulting pressure is used to generate electricity.

Another, the fourth type of HPP arose recently. The devices of a dam-free or tubular power station are very simple, so it can be installed on smaller and hard-to-reach rivers.

Now r Russia's hydropower industry consists of thirteen large and approximately hundreds of small stations. The largest hydroelectric power stations in Russia are built on such rivers as the Ob, Svir, Yenisei and Volga. The largest is the Krasnoyarsk HPP, located near the city of Divnogorsk, in a place where the Yenisei crosses the spurs of the Eastern Sayan. This HPP produces over twenty billion kilowatts of electricity per year.

The main environmental problem of Russia's hydropower plants is associated with the flooding of fertile land, because of which the quality of water in rivers is deteriorating. Artificial reservoirs of hydroelectric power plants eventually turn into sedimentation tanks, where biogenic substances and heavy metals settle. Despite environmental problems, the Russian hydropower industry has broad prospects.