Kislaya Guba Tidal Power Station

The Kislaya Guba Tidal Power Station (Kislogubskaya PES) is an experimental tidal power plant in Kislaya Guba bay on the Barents Sea coast, next to the settlement of Ura-Guba in the Kolsky municipal district of Murmansk Region. It is the only operating tidal power station in Russia: its turbines are turned not by a river or a reservoir but by seawater itself, which twice a day reverses direction with the rising and falling tide.

History

A site for the future station was chosen as early as 1938. The idea of building it was worked out by engineer Lev Bernstein in his graduation thesis. Construction stretched over 1964-1968 and was carried out in an unusual way: the machine-hall building was not built on site but assembled in a shipyard dry dock, then towed by sea to Kislaya Guba and set down on the seabed there. The station was launched in 1968.

Design and capacity

The dam of the Kislogubskaya PES is an earthen, fill-type structure about 30 meters long and 15 meters high. The station is fitted with two water conduits through which seawater flows in both directions as the tide turns. For a long time it ran on a single turbine unit; a second one was installed in 2007, raising the station's capacity to 1.7 MW. The hydro turbines are orthogonal, bidirectional units made at the Sevmash plant; this turbine design is safe for fish passing through the conduits.

Today

The Kislogubskaya PES keeps its status as an experimental station: it is still used to test tidal technologies rather than to generate electricity on an industrial scale. Its site also hosts a scientific base of the Polar Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography, whose staff study life in Kislaya Guba and the adjoining waters of the Barents Sea.

Getting there

The station stands in Kislaya Guba, next to the settlement of Ura-Guba in the Kolsky municipal district of Murmansk Region, on the coast of the Barents Sea.