Kislaja Guba tidal power plant
| Kislaja Guba tidal power plant | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||
| location | |||
|
|||
| Coordinates | 69 ° 22 '39 " N , 33 ° 4' 32" E | ||
| country |
 Russia
|
||
| Waters | Acid Bay (Kislaja Guba) on the Barents Sea | ||
| Data | |||
| Type | Tidal power plant (dam construction) | ||
| Primary energy | Hydropower | ||
| power | 1700 kW installed | ||
| operator | RusHydro | ||
| Start of operations | 1968/2004 | ||
| Shutdown | 1994-2004 (temporarily shut down) | ||
| turbine | formerly 1 × Kaplan turbine , since 2004/2007 2 × vertical turbine |
||
The Kislaja Guba tidal power plant is a dam-type tidal power plant in the Sauren Bay ( Russian Кислая губа , Kislaja Guba ), a fjord on the Kola peninsula north of Murmansk in Russia , which flows into the Barents Sea at the north end .
Technology and history
The system was a test project when it was built and therefore had a relatively small electrical output of only around 400 kilowatts . The power plant was built in 1968, making it the second such facility in the world after the Rance tidal power plant.
The facility is protected as a scientific and technical monument of Russia. It won a gold medal at Expo 2005 in Japan. The operator is RusHydro .
The location for the power plant was chosen because the fjord with an area of about 1 km² and a tidal range of about 5 m at the mouth has a narrow strait (width only about 50 m), which could be closed relatively easily by a barrier structure .
The reinforced concrete turbine building with the dimensions 36 m × 18 m × 15 m was built in a dock near Murmansk, then floated over 100 km to the site and lowered onto its foundation there. The original turbine from the 1960s was a Kaplan turbine with a rotor diameter of 3.3 m. It came from the French company Neyrpic , which had already successfully used this type in Rance.
From 1994 the power plant was shut down for ten years due to financing problems. Up to this point in time, the plant had generated around 8 TWh of electrical energy. By closing the power station, the inflow of seawater was hindered to such an extent that the salt content in the water of the fjord decreased noticeably, which resulted in fish deaths. The fauna in the fjord only recovered after a channel was opened so that water exchanged with the sea again took place.
In 2004 the plant resumed operation. For the restart, the Kaplan turbine was replaced by an "orthogonal" turbine (similar to an H-Darrieus rotor with 4 blades) with an output of 200 kW. This type of turbine has the advantage that the direction of rotation is independent of the direction of flow of the water, i.e. the direction of rotation does not reverse with the alternation of ebb and flow. This enabled operating costs to be reduced by around 30%. The runner with a diameter of 2.5 m was manufactured by the Sevmasch shipyard in Severodvinsk , which is otherwise known primarily for its nuclear submarines . In 2007 another, much larger “orthogonal” turbine with an output of 1500 kW was installed, which from 2006 had also been manufactured by Sewmasch .
There are plans in Russia for two new, much larger projects of this type near the small town of Mesen on the White Sea and near Tugur (Russian Тугур ) on the Sea of Okhotsk , but their implementation is not expected in the near future.
Web links
- Photos from the conversion of the facility to Panoramio
- Report on www.energieforum.ru (German)
- Report on www.bellona.org (English)
- Report (Russian)