The history of the construction and operation of the object of cultural heritage - the Kyiv Central Power Station (ЦЕС-1), the second alternating current station in pre-revolutionary Russia, is considered. The development and improvement of electrical and thermal equipment, changes in the fuel base during the difficult times of the First World War, the revolution and the establishment of Soviet power in Kyiv. The transfer of the station to the control of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, the beginning of research on MHD energy generation, the construction of the second largest research facility in the USSR for this technology began a new - scientific stage in the life of CES-1 as a scientific and experimental base of the Institute of Electrodynamics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. For now, the work of the team of scientists and engineering personnel is focused on thermal engineering problems of energy already within the framework of a separate Institute - thermal energy technologies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. This living monument of the era of industrialization (end of the 19th - 20th centuries) has complex significance for Kyiv and Ukraine: as a legacy of the history of energy and as an active experimental and technological complex.