Angara Hydroelectric System

Angara Hydroelectric System 

the largest series of hydroelectric power plants in the USSR, located on the Angara River.

To put to use the vast potential stores of water energy the river holds, plans call for the construction of six large hydroelectric power plants with a total power of about 14 million kilowatts (kW) and an average annual output of more than 70 billion kilowatt-hours (kW-hr) of electrical energy. The favorable conditions of the locale make it possible to erect high-pressure dams with a relatively small specific volume of construction work and to obtain inexpensive electrical energy. The first station in the series was the Irkutsk hydroelectric power plant, which was put into operation in 1958 with a designed output of 660 megawatts. The low-head Sukhovo and Tel’ma hydroelectric power stations, each with an installed capacity of 400 megawatts and a total output of 3.4 billion kW-hr of electrical energy per year of average water-yield, have been planned as the second and third stations in the grid. The fourth station in the series is the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, which in 1966 reached a capacity of 4.1 million kW. In 1969, at a distance of 40 km below the mouth of the right-hand tributary of the Angara (the Ilim River) construction took place on the fifth station—the Ust’-Ilimsk hydroelectric power plant. Its capacity is 4.3 million kW, and its average annual generation is 21.8 billion kW-hr. The last station of the Angara series—the Boguchany hydroelectric power plant, with an average long-term generation of about 18 billion kW-hr—will be constructed above the village of Boguchany. The Angara Hydroelectric System is the groundwork for the development in the Angar regions of large power-consuming industrial complexes for the production of aluminum, titanium, magnesium, and other types of products. The hydroelectric power plants of the series are supporting units of the Unified Power Grid of Central Siberia.

V. IU. STEKLOV