Hydroelectric Power Plants in Russia: Is the Environmental Problem Normal?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

On September 7, 2019, the Nizhne-Bureyskaya HPP was put into commercial operation in the Amur Region, the station reached its design capacity of 320 MW, all four of its hydroelectric units are in the design working condition.

Taking into account the water regimes of the Bureya River, the average annual output of this hydroelectric power station is expected in the amount of 1.67 billion kilowatt * hours.

The anchor consumer is the Vostochny cosmodrome located in the Amur Region, but electricity will also be needed for the Transsib, for the gas processing plant under construction in the city of Svobodny, for the Power of Siberia gas pipeline.

The Nizhne-Bureyskaya HPP is a counter-regulator for the much more powerful Bureyskaya HPP, the downstream of which has now become the upper basin for the new station.

The new reservoir will be able to equalize the daily inequalities in water discharge from the Bureyskaya HPP, which will allow the main station of the cascade to make fuller use of the installed capacity of its generating equipment. The reservoir of the Nizhne-Bureyskaya HPP will also help in regulating the summer-autumn floods on the Amur, which have now become almost annual - for cities and villages located downstream, this is important.

It should be noted that for the first time in the history of Soviet and Russian hydroelectric construction, the power engineers carried out a number of measures in agreement with our environmental organizations: the Bureysky natural park was formed, during the filling of the reservoir, a whole special operation was carried out to rescue wild animals from the flooding zone and to transfer rare plants …

To distract ungulates, feeding grounds were organized, artificial nests for the rare mandarin duck were arranged - in a word, the hydro-builders made every effort to make the impact of the new reservoir on the surrounding nature as acceptable as possible.

New HPPs in New Russia and the GOELRO Experience

However, this article will be devoted not so much to this, indeed very significant, event in the "biography" of Russia and the RusHydro company, which implemented this project, but to reflections on the following fact. “The Nizhne-Bureyskaya HPP is the most powerful hydroelectric power plant, the construction of which was started and completed in post-Soviet Russia” - approximately with these words they accompanied the solemn ceremony of the station start-up.

But these words need to be clarified: Nizhne-Bureyskaya HPP became the only large HPP in the history of modern Russia, the construction of which was started from scratch, all the other large HPPs commissioned after 1991 were the completion of Soviet long-term construction. Bureyskaya HPP reached full capacity in 2011, Boguchanskaya HPP - in 2015.

And this is where the list of post-Soviet HPPs in Russia simply ends today, RusHydro will continue it when the construction of the Ust-Srednekanskaya HPP is completed and the Zagorskaya PSHPP-2 is restored.

No, hydro construction in Russia is not dead - small hydroelectric power plants are still being built in the North Caucasus and the northwestern region, but the pace of construction of large hydroelectric power plants will remain the same: once every 4-5 years. And this fact is worth considering separately.

Nizhne-Bureyskaya HPP

You will have to start from afar - from the tenths of the last century. In 1912, Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, an energy engineer by training, who returned to the profession, wrote one of his first scientific articles, the conclusion of which cannot be disputed to this day. For the development of the economy and social life of any region, electrification should be a priority.

In other words: if the country's leadership wants the development of a region, then planning this development should begin with the design of a power plant, which will become the basis for everything else - for new plants and factories, for the development of agriculture, for the construction of settlements, cities, road and railways. tracks.

History decreed that just eight years after the creation of this theory, Krzhizhanovsky and his colleagues in the "energy shop" were able to confirm it in practice. Remember Lenin's "formula": "Socialism is Soviet power plus electrification"?

This is how socialism in the USSR began - with the establishment of Soviet power and with the development and implementation of the GOELRO plan. At the same time, the professionals included in the GOELRO headquarters acted strictly in accordance with the theory - they designed power plants in conjunction with the construction of future consumers of electricity, both industrial and agricultural, and in the form of new settlements, large and small.

Why do we remember these "legends of deep antiquity"? There are two main reasons and one “subsidiary” one. The first of them is the fact that the leader of our country, Vladimir Putin, back in 2012 called the development of the Far East “Russia's national idea until the end of the 21st century”. The second is that since 2011, the state company RusHydro has been responsible for the entire energy sector in the Far Eastern Federal District.

The GOERLO plan included a considerable number of hydroelectric power plants, but the power engineers designed their construction on the basis of the knowledge they had in those distant years 1918-1922, this knowledge was not disseminated in the required volume beyond the Urals.

Now this knowledge has been accumulated, because the similarity of the situation at the beginning of the 20s of the last century and the situation in the 10s of the present century is obvious: in both cases, the country's leadership plans to develop the regions, in both cases state-owned companies are engaged in the energy sector.

Typhoons, hurricanes, showers and other "delights"

Another incentive for the creation of the "Far East comprehensive GOELRO plan" is the growing climate change, noticeable with the naked eye in our Amur region. Much has been written about the 2013 flood, which became a real catastrophe, we will not repeat ourselves this time, but there is such a chronicle:

August 27 - September 2, 2015 as a result of heavy rains caused by the passage of typhoon "Goni" in Primorye, up to two monthly precipitation rates fell. Rivers in the south of the region overflowed the banks, including the Rakovka River in the Ussuriysk urban district, where almost 100 residential buildings and 600 adjacent territories were flooded.

Near the village of Krounovka, a 70-meter bridge collapsed; instead, a temporary crossing was built from pipes, concrete slabs and an earthen embankment. In 2016 and 2017, it was repeatedly flooded due to rains, as a result of which the village found itself in transport isolation.

On August 31, 2016, Typhoon Lionrock passed through the territory of Primorsky Territory. As a result of the flood caused by the natural disaster, 27 out of 34 municipal districts of the region were affected, 170 settlements, more than 15 thousand households, over 21 thousand land plots, thousand hectares of agricultural land were flooded. 56 settlements were completely disconnected from the power supply, there was no connection with 51 settlements. 549 kilometers of roads and 189 culverts were destroyed, and about 40 thousand people were recognized as victims.

On July 30, 2018, in order to resist the flood in Khabarovsk, the forces and means of the city administration of civil defense and emergency situations were transferred to readiness No. 1. In case of the arrival of large water and flooding of residential buildings in the regional center, places are determined for temporary accommodation and evacuation points for citizens.

According to forecasts of hydrologists, in the first ten days of August, the level of the Amur near Khabarovsk will reach 550 centimeters. In this regard, the structural divisions of the mayor's office have been tasked with identifying potentially dangerous places, determining the number of residential buildings that may be in the flooded zone.

The floods and floods of 2019 are not over yet, typhoons traditionally leave the Amur region in late September and early October, but statistics for July have already been obtained - so standard that they should be cited.

If we take the volume of the July 2019 flood in the Far East as 100%, then it was formed as follows:

33% - unregulated waters of the Upper Amur;

10% - unregulated waters of the Ussuri;

24% - partially regulated waters of the Chinese Songhua River;

22% - partially regulated waters of Zeya;

11% - partially regulated waters of Bureya.

Floods and floods - every 1-2 years, every 1-2 years - billions of dollars in payments from state and local budgets as compensation, thousands of man-hours to restore roads, bridges, power lines, endless repair of storm sewers, construction and "rebuilding" protective dams, city streets sinking under water, dachas and vegetable gardens, intercity routes, steadily growing volumes of investments in the Ministry of Emergencies.

Flooding of a settlement in the Far East

And, of course - fees to journalists who, at times quite realistically risking their lives, report from the place where residents are evacuated, where tens of thousands of personal tragedies of those who lose their health, property, who suffer losses due to washed away crops, drowned home cattle and so on. This cannot be called "romance", year after year, what Vladimir Putin said quite recently, sounds like a refrain:

"The demographic situation in the Far East remains in the" red zone ", the outflow of the population cannot be stopped."

Of course, the Amur Region is far from the entire Far East, but it is on the Amur and on its tributaries that the largest number of large cities is located; it is here, in the southernmost part of the region, that the most convenient territories for the development of agriculture are located.

The trade war between China and the United States continues to rage, Beijing raises duties on American foodstuffs, logistically the Amur region is here, but instead of reporting on crop growth, we read reports on floods and flooding.

We read about anything, but not about new construction projects of large hydroelectric power plants, which could radically change the situation: regulate the inflows into the Amur in its upper reaches and forget about a third of the flood water volume, regulate the Zeya and don’t think about another 10-12% of floods …

But the reality looks different: in 2011, the construction of the Bureyskaya hydroelectric power station was completed, eight years later the construction of the Nizhne-Bureyskaya hydroelectric power station was defeated and - that's it, no hints that the continuation will ever follow. Ust-Srednekanskaya is the only large hydroelectric power station in the whole of Russia, the construction of which continues at the present time.

Without touching on everything else, we simply state an unshakable fact - such a minimum of construction, such interruptions will inevitably lead to the fact that in our country the engineering art of creating large hydroelectric power plants will simply disappear as a result of the loss of competencies, loss of experience, skills, personnel, and self-liquidation as unnecessary contractors.

The analytical online magazine Geoenergetika.ru more than once or twice talked about what is happening with the nuclear power industry in the USA, France, and England: the pauses between the construction of new nuclear power plants brought this industry in these countries to the brink of complete collapse. There are no exceptions to this rule, that is why it is so bitter to observe what is happening not “somewhere out there,” but here in Russia.

Our country, which in the 50-70s of the last century was able to build hydroelectric power plants on the Volga and in Siberia, blocking the greatest rivers, year after year reads dismal lines "Flooded, washed away, evacuated, the flood ridge reached city X, a state of emergency was declared in city K" …

The ecological situation has returned to a long-term norm

On August 27, 2013, having visited the areas affected by flooding, Vladimir Putin proposed to create a government commission that would deal with flood prevention and control of the water situation at the facilities of the Far East. Dmitry Medvedev took the proposal as an order - on September 3, the commission was created, and Arkady Dvorkovich was appointed its head.

On September 21, 2013, Putin instructed the newly formed commission to start developing a program for the construction of new hydroelectric power plants on the Amur and its tributaries, the commission “took it under its hood”. The commission worked just shock - there were eight meetings, some meetings, and … they were liquidated in 2015 by a new order of Mr. Medvedev, without even creating a hint of a work plan.

The banks of the Amur were strengthened with this commission, ministries, a draft plan, a project plan, and even stormy, prolonged applause. There is no development of the energy complex, there are no attempts to protect against floods, similar to what happened in 2013, there are no attempts to implement the contract for the sale of electricity with China in full either. There is only a wonderful phrase with which the liquidation of the commission is justified:

Read again: "Long-term norm." Like? U. S. too. Back in Soviet times, plans were developed for the construction of hydroelectric power plants and reservoirs on the Shilka River in the upper reaches of the Amur, additional hydroelectric power plants on the Zeya and its tributaries, on the Niman River - a tributary of the Bureya, on the Bolshaya Ussurka River, which flows into the Amur in the Primorsky Territory.

None of these projects is in demand - "the ecological situation is normal", there is no extra money in the budget, there are no energy consumers in that Far East, so who needs it?

But every year, more and more billions of rubles are found for compensation for floods and floods, for evacuations, for the chaotic construction of dams - they are trying to design their construction separately in each city, there is no trace of any kind of system.

The 2013 catastrophe cost Russia 569 billion rubles (the dollar exchange rate until the fall of 2014 can be found by anyone), how much did the floods of 2015, 2016, 2018 cost, what will the summer and fall of 2019 be?

It doesn't matter - after all, the main thing is that our "ecological situation has returned to a long-term norm." Planning not only the construction of hydroelectric power plants, but also industrial facilities, the electrification of new mining projects, new settlements? No, you haven't. But we know for sure that the Far East is extremely interesting for foreign investors - so let the investors from the hydroelectric power station themselves solve all the issues.

An investor who comes to a region where roads are washed away almost every year, where large areas go under water, where the problems of electrification and heating will have to be solved independently - where are you?

Round table on hydropower in Russia

In fact, the question is quite logical: even if we do not build large hydroelectric power plants on our own, since we want to abandon this industry, why don’t investors from China come to this sector? The purpose of the Power of Siberia is not a secret - the demand for electricity is growing in China, and they are already tired of sneezing and coughing from coal smog.

But after all, the power transmission line coming from the hydroelectric power station on the territory of Russia is even more environmentally friendly than power plants operating on natural gas. Billions of dollars as an advance for the construction of the main gas pipeline, which was laid for four years, were found in China, but investments in hydroelectric power plants in the Russian part of the Amur Region are not. What is it, how is it?

Pavel Zavalny, Chairman of the Energy Committee

On July 2, 2018, a round table on the topic "Development of hydropower in the Russian Federation: prospects, problematic issues" was held at the Energy Committee of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. The beginning was the speech of the head of this committee of the State Duma, Mr. Zavalny Pavel Nikolayevich, who can confidently be considered a reference example of how our legislators treat, how they understand the energy industry.

The video on the link is short, only one and a half minutes, and we present to your attention the transcript in its entirety, without edits.

So, let us remind you that the round table was devoted to hydroelectric generation, the hall was attended by the heads of RusHydro, System Operator, EN + (owns a cascade of hydroelectric power plants on the Yenisei), and the federal grid company. And it was for them that Mr. Zavalny Pavel Nikolaevich, head of the State Duma committee, pronounced the following text.

Ready?

“Given the same opportunities for gas generation in our country, colleagues, at this time, in the early 90s, a large verification of the country began, in fact there was a gas pause in energy supply. And today gas in the energy balance is 52%, and in the European part of Russia it exceeds, sometimes, 80% in the gas balance.

And we did an analysis with the involvement of the Higher School of Economics "Prospects for gas and coal generation", and the assessment is as follows. In favor of gas generation, taking into account our reserves, created gas delivery routes, reliability, security of supplies, both the economic factor and the environmental factor, everyone speaks in favor of gas generation.

And even the coal-fired generation that is there in Rostov and the Komi Kirovo-Chepetskaya GRES and, therefore, coal is used, even they are economically and environmentally inferior to gas generation, and can be further operated and modernized only on the basis of other, in fact, considerations: not to close the coal mines in Komi or, say, jobs and the coal industry in Rostov.

That is, in other words, absolutely, but not for economic and environmental reasons. Therefore, gas generation today is the most economically justified in comparison with other types of generation”.

This was the “word” of the head of the profile committee, which draws up draft laws on the basis of which the energy industry of Russia functions, and this was the tone for the “round table” dedicated, let us recall, to hydropower.

The full video of this meeting was for some time on the DumaTV website, but now, unfortunately, it has already been seized and cannot be found.

Yes, in order not to return to the monumental speech of Mr. Zavalny, let us recall that in Komi, gas was supplied to 7% from small settlements with an average rate for Russia of 59%.

How this confirms the thesis of Mr. Zavalny about the economic attractiveness of gas generation, in our editorial office no one could understand, therefore we are waiting for tips from you, dear readers. Kirovo-Chepetskaya GRES, which Mr. Legislator suddenly mentioned, is located in the Kirov region.

Analysis of the situation from RusHydro

For our part, we will remind you what hydroelectricity is, what importance hydroelectric power plants have in the energy sector, in the economy and in other sectors of life in any country.

Hydroelectric power plants are the cheapest generation. Hydroelectric power plants are the most maneuverable power plants capable of smoothing out morning consumption peaks. Hydroelectric power station is the regulation of water flow in flood-affected areas.

Hydroelectric power station is the regulation of river navigation, it is the provision of drinking water to settlements and water for irrigation needs of agriculture, it is an opportunity to solve the problems of fish farming.

In terms of the hydro potential of large rivers, Russia is in second place in the world ranking, while this potential is used by 20%, and professional power engineers spoke about the reasons why this is so and not otherwise at the aforementioned “round table” clearly and briefly.

Here is the information provided by Nikolay Shulginov, General Director of RusHydro.

Nikolay Shulginov, Head of RusHydro

one. Design and construction of hydroelectric reservoirs. In accordance with the Water Code of Russia, the existing reservoirs of hydroelectric power plants are in federal state ownership. But the creation of new reservoirs is not regulated by legislation, nor is it defined normatively:

the procedure for making a decision on creation;

financing mechanisms - investments in the creation of a reservoir cannot be attributed to capital costs, which excludes the possibility of attracting foreign investors;

the procedure for appointing a construction customer;

the legal status of the reservoir before it is filled with water;

land reservation procedure.

The previously valid regulatory documents on the creation of reservoirs are currently not legitimate.

2. Problems of compliance with the requirements of the Rules for ensuring the safety and anti-terrorist protection of hydropower facilities:

there is no “flexible” approach that takes into account real threats for a specific facility, including for small hydroelectric power plants, which are subject to the same requirements as for large ones;

supervisory authorities use a formal approach when checking objects: compliance of the established engineering and technical means with the list, and not the actual security of objects.

Many provisions of this list have not been revised since the 30s of the last century, when they were developed. In accordance with them, the company operating the hydroelectric power station, for example, is obliged to organize on each road passing through the dam, to organize inspection points for all vehicles, without exception, intending to use such roads.

The same applies to railway transport - power engineers are obliged to equip some kind of customs inspections at all their dams; fulfillment of all the requirements of the Rules does not ensure guaranteed protection of the HPP; difficult to implement and expensive measures at the modern level of development of technical means can be replaced by more effective and more economical.

3. The current legislation in the field of HPP safety creates conditions for the designation (revision) of a class of hydrotechnical structures of HPPs without design justification and assessment of the consequences of changes in the structure of structures of operating HPPs.

Such decisions are often conditioned by formal criteria, and not by the need to increase the level of reliability; no one evaluates or is responsible for the fact that changes in the design of existing hydroelectric power plants can increase the risks for the population living near the hydroelectric power station.

One of the reasons for increasing the safety class of hydraulic structures is illegal or ill-conceived private development in the protection zone of reservoirs. Permits for such development are issued by local governments without the consent of the HPP operator companies, and the regulatory authorities that have discovered residential buildings in the protected zone have every right to increase the HPP safety class.

Examples of potential costs associated with increasing the safety classes of HPPs, decisions on which have already been made by Rostekhnadzor: Votkinskaya HPP - 20.6 billion rubles; at the stage of registration - decisions on the Ust-Srednekanskaya HPP and on the cascade of the Kuban HPPs, which will cost RusHydro 21, 6 and 4.5 billion rubles, respectively.

4. Imperfection of the mechanism for determining the amount of compensation for damage to aquatic biological resources (WBR):

Calculations of the amount of damage to the WBG are carried out on the basis of methods that do not take into account the peculiarities of the functioning of hydroelectric power plants: formally, hydroelectric power plants refer to facilities using irretrievable water intake, a fee is charged for this, while the positive effect of reservoirs is not taken into account at all; when appointing compensations by the regulatory authorities, the most expensive measures are selected …

For example, operators are required to build fish factories to grow the most valuable fish species, regardless of the geographic location of a particular hydroelectric power station, while the highest percentage of juvenile mortality is used as a calculated one; the methods use the harm assessment model of the 60s of the last century …

Information from the System Operator

Alexander Ilyenko, Director for Development Management of the UES of Russia of the “System Operator of the UES”, also described the information professionally.

Just in case, we remind you that the CO performs the functions of the central dispatching control of the unified energy system of Russia - it “conducts” the work of all power plants so that their “music” sounds harmonious, regulating the operating modes throughout the day, ensures the stability of the current frequency in the network, planning and realizing the flows between regional power systems.

The difference between the peak UES is currently about 23 GW (23'000 MW). Half of this unevenness of CO can be smoothed out due to the use of hydroelectric power plants in the morning hours and due to the redistribution of the load between regions located in different time zones.

Only half - after all, the UES of the USSR, the Mir energy system, which included the countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, were much larger than the UES of Russia. The second half is the subject of constant CO headache, since it is forced to make thermal power plants work in a maneuverable mode: coal, gas and fuel oil.

NPPs do not participate in maneuvering in order to avoid radiation incidents, the result for thermal plants is completely natural: they are forced to work with reduced efficiency, do not fully use the installed capacity of the equipment, which entails an increase in the share of specific fuel consumption, which leads to an increase in the cost of electricity supplied to consumers.

And this is the situation of the present time, when it is only about regulating fluctuations in demand, and fluctuations in production can be neglected, since the share of intermittent alternative generation (solar and wind power plants) does not exceed 1%.

The development of RES energy will make the situation even more tense - the need to regulate production peaks according to an unpredictable schedule will lead to a further decrease in the efficiency of thermal power plants and to a further increase in the cost of electricity for consumers.

At the same time, it is necessary to remember about the "physics" of power maneuvering for basic power plants - the range of such a maneuver has finite values, after which it will be necessary to go to extreme measures. Extreme measures are the shutdown of entire blocks of thermal power plants at night and the growing risk that it will be simply impossible to cope with the morning peaks in consumption, and then, to ensure the safety of the UES, it will be necessary to resort to rolling blackouts throughout its area of operation.

The only alternative to such a development of events is the use of basic industrial-scale energy storage units, that is, storage units of gigawatt classes, since only they will be of significant importance on the scale of the UES of Russia.

The technical requirement for such storage devices, in addition to the volume, is the ability to switch from the accumulation mode to the power delivery mode as quickly as possible and not work in any of these modes, if it is necessary for the power system dispatchers.

Nothing that fully meets these requirements, except for pumped storage power plants (pumped storage power plants) is practically not used in the world, pumped storage power plants currently account for 99% of the regulatory capacity. Recall that a pumped storage power plant is a hydroelectric power plant that has not one, but two basins, an upper and a lower one.

Hydroelectric units of the PSPP can operate both in the generator mode and in the pump mode - in the latter case, water is pumped from the lower basin to the upper one. A PSP with a capacity of 1 GW allows thermal power plants not to reduce the load on the same 1 GW at night - the energy is spent on the operation of the pumps. During the hours of the morning peak of demand, the PSPP allows thermal power plants not to increase their output - again by 1 GW.

The only large PSPP in Russia, Zagorkaya, has a capacity of 1.2 GW, but its regulating capacity is twice as high and amounts to 2.4 GW. Consequently, in order for CO not to force thermal power plants to maneuver in the amount of 11.5 GW, it will be enough to build a pumped storage power plant with a total capacity of 5.75 GW.

Yes, such a large-scale construction will require serious investments, but the result will be a much more efficient operation of the entire UES of Russia, and a decrease in the cost of electricity for the end consumer.

Back in Soviet times, experts in hydrology investigated all the rivers of the European part of Russia - areas where you can equip a pair of reservoirs with a good height difference between them were found in a volume sufficient for the construction of a pumped storage power plant with a total capacity of about 10 GW. Built - exactly one, Zagorskaya.

Zagorskaya PSPP, view from the headwater

The reasons why the construction of new ones is not going on are listed by Nikolai Shulginov, but there is one more. There are nighttime electricity tariffs in Russia, but they are in effect for only a few hours, during which the Zagorskaya PSPP does not have time to fill its upper basin. The result, as today's top economists say, is "negative profit."

Actually, for this reason, RusHydro is in no hurry with the restoration and commissioning of the Zagorskaya PSHPP-2 - the current legislation will not allow to recoup the investment.

The neighbor on the map of Russia is China, in which 15 new pumped storage power plants are currently being built at the same time, although China has a capacity of 22 GW of existing pumped storage power plants - according to this indicator, China has come out on top in the world, overtaking the United States by 1 GW. In China, pumped storage power plants are owned by the central dispatch office, which pays for their work due to the tariff for regulating the stability of the interconnected power system from companies that own any other power plants.

One of the results of this approach is the fact that it is in China that the largest number of wind and solar power plants are currently being built - CDU is not worried that the growth of intermittent alternative generation will destabilize the power system.

In the United States, the approach to the operating modes of pumped storage power plants, unlike China, is non-market - the federal government simply subsidizes the companies that own pumped storage power plants, maintaining the stability of the energy system with a "resounding dollar".

In the European Union, with its obsessive desire for "green energy", every place that allows the construction of a pumped storage power plant is taken into account in the most careful way, and only Norway remains free, and fantastically expensive regulation projects are already appearing, for example, the energy system of Germany at the expense of pumped storage power plants in the northern fjords …

In Russia? In Russia, neither the one nor the other, nor the third, the government froze the project for the construction of a pumped storage power plant in the Leningrad region back in 2015.

Looking for allies and hopes of success

In order to rectify the situation, no efforts by RusHydro, the System Operator and even the Ministry of Energy are not enough - the amendment of laws and bylaws in Russia is attributed to the jurisdiction of the legislative body, that is, our State Duma. What answer was received by hydropower in response to such a list from the respected Pavel Nikolayevich Zavalin?

"Taking into account the opinions expressed, based on the results of the Round Table, a list of recommendations will be formed for improving the legislation governing various aspects of the construction and operation of hydroelectric power plants."

Verbatim. Who is responsible, what are the deadlines, what is the order of the upcoming actions? There are no answers. However, Alexander Ilyenko said at the round table that JI and energy companies do not stop trying to bring the government and legislators to their senses, to understand the realities developing in the energy sector.

Power engineers take part in all discussions of Russia's new energy strategy - on the instructions of the president, the government was supposed to develop it back in 2017, now a new deadline has been announced, until the end of 2019. The current energy strategy was adopted in 2009 and is designed for the period until 2020, the validity period of the new one will be calculated until 2035, and the SO hopes that it will be able to ensure that the priority importance of the construction of a pumped storage power plant will appear in it.

Did the power engineers manage to get an ally in the person of the State Duma Committee on Energy as a result of the round table?

Over the past year, there is no information in open sources of information about the activity of the committee, but the details of the course of discussions of such issues and problems never appear in them. Of course, I would like to hope for the best - that our federal leadership will take into account the interests of the hydropower industry, that research and development work will be resumed to create a technology for transmitting electricity through direct current transmission lines.

This technology makes it possible to minimize losses of electricity during transmission; China has recently shown the greatest success in this direction. The successful implementation of this technology will make it possible to return to projects for the construction of hydroelectric power plants in Siberia and the Far East, even if in these regions socio-economic development and growth in electricity consumption are slow.

Recall that interstate working groups have already been created to develop projects for two energy bridges at once: Russia ⇒ Georgia ⇒ Armenia ⇒ Iran and Russia ⇒ Azerbaijan ⇒ Iran, which is vigorously growing energy consumption in Mongolia.

But this is a completely different story, requiring separate articles.