Soviets look to tides, wind for power

Press, 25 October 1980, Page 14

Soviets look to tides, wind for power

This article, by Leonid Staroselsky and Lev Bernsrtein, was supplied by the Soviet Embassy in Wellington. s

Experts are vigorously searching for new sources of energy for three reasons the unprecedented growth of energy consumption. the gradual depletion of the world reserves of energy's mineral sources and the alarming problem of pollution. The energy of the wind is one of the real alternatives.

the wind. The design capacity of Sidorov’s installation is 40.000 kilowatts of electric power per hour, which approaches the capacity of a modern thermal power station. The design also takes into account the possibility of calm. Mr Sidorov has designed a wind-hydrogen installation which, in parallel with the generation of energy, will carry out the electrolysis of water, obtaining low-cost hydrogen. If it is' calm, energy will be generated by a thermal generator working on hydrogen fuel kept in gas holders for the time being. During the combustion of hydrogen only water vapour gets into the air. In a year and a half or in two years the new installation will generate electricity in the same Markhotsky Pass near Novorossiisk (this is the windiest place in the Soviet Union). The device is expected to generate annually more than ■ 100 million kilowatt-hours of electric power. The entire Soviet Arctic is rich in winds. The energy stocks of Arctic winds are sufficient to ensure capacities of the order of several thousand : million kilowatts. In other words, it is possible to fulfill the present demands for electric power all over the world. Today experts are setting a much more modest task: to establish a ring of wind power installations which could meet the requirements of the Kola Peninsula. The future Kola windpower ring will represent a chain 1100 kilometres long and 40 kilometres wide which will incorporate 238 units each of which will have a capacity of a million kilowatts. Energy will flow into the grid practically continuously since windy periods in various areas do not coincide.

Experimental windoperated power stations with a capacity of 100 to 200 kilowatts already operate in some regions of the Soviet Union and in some other countries. The giant wind-wheel is the main principle of the windoperated station. At the wind-operated station on the Markhotsky Pass near Novorossiisk the wheel is 24 metres in diameter (the capacity is 100 kilowatts). The wind-operated station in Clayton (New Jersey. U.S.A.) has a wheel 40 metres in diameter and a capacity of 200 kilowatts. The cost of energy from such giant structures is still far from being competitive. The existing models have another regrettable drawback. They cannot operate at high speeds of wind: if it is over 20 metres per second, the station must be stopped since its impeller may go out of order. So, both calm and squall are undesirable. The way out of this situation was suggested by Mr Vladimir Sidorov, chief designer of the Tsiklon (Cyclone) research-industrial association. He has designed an installation capable of withstanding any speed of the wind and hence yielding maximum energy. Instead of one impeller the unit has eight rotors on which the whole load is distributed uniformly. The cables, drives of the generators and other units of the station are fixed, which enables them to operate without risk, no matter what the intensity of

According to preliminary calculations the production cost of electric power in the Kola wind-power grid will be much lower than the current average cost for the Soviet Union.

Soviet scientists believe that the energy problem cannot be radically solved bv wind-power, but that windpower engineering can make a weighty contribution to the solution of this problem, and that in some areas of the world it may become the leading source of energy. The aggregate electric potential of the tides, which can be put to real use. amounts to several trillion kwh a year. But it is clear that tidal power plants too cannot alone resolve the global problems of power engineering.

The first tidal power plant, with a capacity of 240,000 kw, was built in France on the Rance River in the second half of the sixties. The building and operation of the plant confirmed the practicability of using tidal energy. A Soviet tidal power plant built at the Bay of Kislaya (a bay in the Barents Sea), was the second tidal station in the world. Though the design of this plant made use of the experience accumulated by the French scientists, it was different from their plant in many respects. During the construction of the Rance tidal power plant a considerable portion of the capital investment went into the construction of a dam and a water drainage system. The Soviet specialists suggested using a different method for the plant’s construction.

The building of the tidal plant was assembled in the dockyards on the Cape of Prityka near Murmansk. After the assembly of a sealed hydraulic turbine with a capacity .of 400 kW the building was towed to the site and placed on a special foundation prepared beforehand.

Successful operation of the station for 12 years and the research work done at the plant confirmed the correctness and reliability of all engineering solutions. The Kislogubskaya tidal plant became the prototype of all tidal plants designed these days. The floating method has been utilised by the Canadian specialists for the design of a tidal plant in the Bay of Fundy, and by the British specialists in their Severn design. Soviet specialists have adopted the design of a single-storage tidal plant. Such plants are connected to the unified power grids which integrate thermal and hydro-power plants. The reversible units of tidal plants, used as pumps at nights, can utilise the surplus energy of thermal plants to pump water into .reservoirs. As a result, tidal plants can generate electricity at the time of peak loads. At the same time, changes

in the capacity of lidal plants, caused by the irregularities of tides can be compensated for by the rivet-hydro-power- stations- with large reservoirs.

tidal power plants can be built on the White Sea and the Sea ‘ of Okhotsk, where the heights of tides reach 10 and 13.5 metres, respectively. Specialists are carrying out preparations for designing several tidal stations. Plans are in train to build the Mezenskaya plant on the White Sea with a capacity of up to 10,000,000 kW wheih will annuallv generate 33,000,000,000 kwh. There are plans to erect a station of the same capacity in the Tugur Sea in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Penzhinsky Bay in the same sea offers still greater opportunities. If the whole of the bay were cut off from the sea by a dam stretching from Dalny Cape to Povorotny Cape, the

local tidal plant would generate 30(1,000.000,000 kwh a year. The capacity of the plant would exceed 100,000,000 kW. Hundreds and - even thousands of units, are required to increase the capacity of tidal stations with lower water-heads of tides. It is possible to reduce the number of units by increasing the diameter of the trubines working wheels. Soviet specialists are now facing the task of designing a sealed tidal turbine with a greater unit capacity. Transition from a small tidal plant-in Kislaya. Bay to super-powerful plants requires an intermediate stage. Specialists are now designing the Lumbovskaya tidal plant with a capacity of 300,000 kW, which will be a kind of testing ground for new solutions in the construction of dams and big units. This ‘ plant will be built; oft the White Sea.