Kaluga hydroelectric station

The high rate of industrialization of the central regions of the RSFSR created a shortage of generating capacity, which required the construction of large power plants. For the first time the idea of ​​building the Kaluga hydroelectric station was proposed in 1930 by an engineer of the Moscow-Oka bureau of the hydropower plant Tarasov. By 1934, the Institute "Hydroenergoproekt" conducted research on the Oka floodplain, which confirmed the feasibility of building the station. In March 1939, at the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b), it was decided to build a hydroelectric power station in the vicinity of Kaluga (near the village of Annenki ), which was included in the Third Five-Year Development Plan of the USSR National Economy for 1938-1942. In the same year, intensive exploration and drilling of pits began. The work was carried out mainly by the prisoners of the GULAG . However, with the beginning of the war, all the works were rolled up ^[1] .

Immediately after the war, in 1946, the resumption of construction was scheduled for 1949, it was included in the Fourth Five-Year Plan . However, the project has not started.

Benefits

• Providing cheap electricity to Moscow, Moscow, Tula and Kaluga regions, which allowed at that time to stop burning 800 thousand tons of brown coal per year.
• Raising the water level of the Oka from Kaluga to Nizhny Novgorod would make it easier to navigate and create a new annular waterway from Nizhny Novgorod along the Volga, then along the Moscow-Volga canal , then along the Moscow and Oka rivers, which flow back into the Volga near Nizhny Novgorod. The ring highway would unload the Moscow-Volga canal from sluicing of empty vessels that could be sent down the Oka and further along the Volga. Creation of new water routes along Upe between Kaluga and Tula, along the Ugra with Yukhnov, along Zhizdra to Kozelsk.

Disadvantages

• The flooding of a large area of ​​agricultural land (about 100 thousand hectares), 6,400 households, including directly in Kaluga itself ^[2] .
• Forced transfer of railways in obviously unfavorable places. The construction of large water defenses, the height of earth dams around the reservoir required at least 30 meters.

• The average annual electricity generation is 525 million kWh, up to 843 million kWh in high-water years.
• The length of the entire dam - 1510 meters. Its concrete part is 310 meters (it was supposed to locate a power unit with three identical generating units with a total capacity of 150 MW)
• The hydroelectric reservoir is at least 4.5 kilometers wide, several dozen kilometers long, with a volume of 8 billion m³ ^[3] .

For the construction of the Kaluga hydroelectric station, a road was laid in several settlements, which were simultaneously electrified.

One of the camps of the station builders ’prisoners was located at the site of the so-called“ collapse ”in the Gruzdovskiy open-cast mine, where the townsmen’s resting place is currently located.

It is planned to build a new bridge across the Oka River at the construction site.

• V. Gavrilov . Kaluga hydroelectric station on the river. Oka and its significance for the city of Moscow and the Moscow region. // Glavgidroenergostroy USSR, M: 1937