Volga-Kama coordinated waterworks facilities (50 years after startup of the first generating set of the Kuibyshev hydropower plant)

Abstract

Twenty-four large waterworks facilities with total effective storage capacity of 85.5 km3 have been built and operate in the basin of the Volga and Kama Rivers. The nine largest facilities (Rybinsk, Nizhegorodskoe, Cheboksary, Kamsk, Votkinsk, Nizhnekamsk, Kuibyshev, Saratov, and Volgograd) enter the Volga-Kama coordinated system (VKCS). The total effective storage capacity of these waterworks facilities amounts to 78.0 km3. The Volga River has been a navigable route since ancient times. Cargo vessels of twenty types, the names of which only historians remember, traveled here in the XIX century. Freightage over Volga was hindered by numerous shallows and rifts, the number of which exceeded two hundred from Tver to Astrakhan. From Tver to Rybinsk vessels navigated only at high water until July. In the region from Rybinsk to Nizhny Novgorod the depth of the river on rifts at low water was about 70 cm. In 1834 it fell to 40 cm on the Ovsyanikovskaya shallow (30 km upstream from Kostroma). The difficulties with passing the rifts were an incentive for constructing dams on Upper Volga. In the 1840s the navigation conditions in the upper reaches of Volga were improved somewhat, when the Chief Superintendent of the Lines of Communication of Russia Earl Kleinmikhel’ initiated construction of a navigation dam on Upper Volga, which was reconstructed 100 years layer in 1943. The dam was situated 4 km downstream from the outflow of the river from the Volgo Lake and formed a reservoir with an effective storage capacity of 0.4 km3 (0.5 km3 after the reconstruction). Releases from this reservoir in the periods of summer low water ensured acceptable navigation depths and rafting over Volga up to Rybinsk. This is the only waterworks facility on Volga, which has no power dam, and its reservoir serves primarily for navigation purposes. However, with growth in the freight turnover and in losses due to interrupted navigation the problem of navigable water over the whole of the Volga River became urgent. Variants of erection of checks were discussed in Russia even before the 1917 Revolution. The World War I, the Revolution, and the Civil War delayed the solution of this problem. The topic arose again in the 1930s at a special session of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR devoted to the problems of Volga and Caspian Sea. Prominent scientists of the country discussed plans for using the water and power resources of Russia not forgetting about the negative consequences of construction of a coordinated hydroelectric system including cutoff of a large part of spawning-grounds ensuring reproduction of valuable kinds of Volga-Caspian fish. In 1934 the Gidroenergoproekt Institute (prof. Rizenkampf) developed an “Engineering scheme for reconstruction of Volga” that stipulated construction of waterworks facilities with hydropower plants on the Oka and Kama Rivers and on the Volga River itself (near Yaroslavl, Balakhna, and Kriushi). In accordance with the Scheme the low runoff of the Volga River was to be refilled from the Lache, Vozhe, and Kubenskoe Lakes in order to increase the navigation depth and to compensate the reduction of inflow to the Caspian Sea as a result of the then planned diversion for irrigating millions of hectares of land in the Zavolzhie and in the Kura Basin. The efforts of several design organizations (Gidroproekt, Gidroenergoproekt, Nizhnevolgoproekt) resulted in the creation of a scheme of Volga-Kama coordinated system of waterworks facilities, which differed substantially from that suggested by Rizenkampf and included three hydropower plants (HPP) on Kama and nine HPP on Volga including the Nizhnevolzhsk HPP, the erection of which was finally abandoned in the early 1960s. Power Technology and Engineering Vol. 39, No. 6, 2005