CONCLUSION
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For many years, the energy supply system of the Murmansk region has developed by means of the consistent exploitation of the region’s hydro energy resources, the burning of organic fuels delivered from elsewhere at thermal power plants and boiler houses, and the generation of electric power from nuclear fuel at the Kola Nuclear Power Plant. The policy of further development of the region’s energy economy hinges on the construction of the second Kola Nuclear Power Plant and the transportation of natural gas deliveries to the region. At the same time, the Murmansk region has at its disposal a wide array of non-conventional and renewable energy sources – such as energy of the sun, wind, small rivers, tides and sea surface waves, etc. – which under certain conditions can successfully compete with traditional energy sources, or complement the latter, and provide an economic benefit.
The table below shows the results of an assessment of potential and technical resources available in non-traditional renewable energy sources. This evaluation clearly demonstrates that sun energy resources are the region’s largest. However, northern conditions present a number of difficulties that will challenge efforts to exploit this source of energy. The main challenge is posed by the minimum occurrence of solar energy, or the lack thereof, during the winter months, when energy needs of the consumers reach their peak. Secondly, because of the intense cyclone activity characteristic to northern latitudes, the number of days in a year with clear and sunny weather is relatively modest. Therefore, only a few small sites, like beacons or buoys, are currently suitable for the practical application of solar energy, where the traditional scheme for supplying energy is too costly.
Table
Resources of non-conventional and renewable energy sources in the Murmansk region, in TWh
| Energy sources | Potential resources | Technical resources |
| Sun | 110,000 | 11,000 |
| Wind | 21,000 | 360 |
| Small river | 7 | 4.4 |
| Tides | 11 | 2.0 |
| Sea waves | 3 | 1.6 |
| Wood wastes | 1.5 | 0.9 |
Biodegradable livestoc and poultry wastes | 0.13 | 0.09 |
The Kola Peninsula also has significant prospects in tidal energy. It has gained valuable experience operating the Kislaya Bay Tidal Power Plant with a capacity of 400 kW. However, due to the relatively small tidal heights washing against the peninsula’s coasts – two to three meters on average – and the limited number of water basins that could be cut off by a dam, tidal power plant projects are only applicable in a few select places in the region. One noteworthy site is Lumbovsky Bay of the White Sea, where the average tidal height is 4.2 m, and the size of the water basin suitable for use by a tidal power plant is between 70 and 90 km2. It has been estimated that a future Lumbovsky Tidal Power Plant will potentially have a capacity of between 320 MW and 670 MW and a yearly energy output of up to 2 TWh. However, the remote location of this prospective construction site and the necessity of sizable investment funds, as well as a number of other factors, push this project off into a less foreseeable future. Besides, as specialists estimate, it would be more expedient to start exploring this energy source with an experimental industrial-operation model – a Kola Tidal Power Plant with a capacity of 40 MW – in Dolgaya Bay, near the village of Teriberka. This pilot project may serve as an intermediate phase for the development of the Lumbovsky Tidal Plant construction project.
The Kola Peninsula has a coastline more than 1,000 kilometers long. An evaluation of energy resources of ocean surface waves available along the coasts of the Barents and White Seas has shown that these resources are quite substantial. However, due to the severe climate, it is quite problematic to convert, store and transmit surface wave energy into generated power. As of today, there are no obvious premises warranting development of this energy source in the region.
Last, though not necessarily least, in the list of non-conventional and renewable energy sources is bio-energy found in wood waste and the organic waste of the livestock and poultry farming industries. The technical potential of these resources in the Murmansk region is small in comparison to other energy sources – less than 1 TWh a year. Besides, bio-energy resources are dispersed across a multitude of small farms in the region. It is nonetheless obvious that utilizing biodegradable waste resources is of certain interest to small and isolated populated areas and localities where these wastes are generated. Timber and wood waste have been used by mankind for centuries. Biodegradable wastes generated from livestock and poultry farming constitute a “younger” energy source, but various technologies developed in the past decades to efficiently recycle these raw materials have finally reached polar regions as well. In particular, they have been successfully applied in the Kovdor region of Murmansk, where biogas is produced with the help of bio-energy converters, a fuel both valuable and convenient for practical use. Further popularization of the experience accumulated in Kovdor can only be welcomed.
Of all the non-conventional renewable energy sources studied in this report, exploitation of small river hydro energy and wind energy are the most promising for the Murmansk region. Technical hydro energy resources of the region’s small rivers are estimated at 4.4 TWh, with an average yearly capacity reaching 516 MW. This evaluation encompasses 35 small and medium-size rivers of the region.
The challenges of harnessing hydro energy of small rivers are not new. In the post-war years, a number of small village hydro energy plants were constructed – running on heads of between 2 m and 6 m and with capacities ranging between 10 kW and 100 kW. In the 1960s, these plants were gradually replaced by diesel installations which were cheaper at that time. Today, because of the rising prices of organic fuels, application of stream flow energy has started to attract growing interest. The significance of fishing for the majority of the region’s rivers is a serious obstacle to construction of new hydroelectric power plants. Compromises are needed, such as parallel construction of hydroelectric power plants and fishways, or construction of fish farms to compensate for the damages incurred during construction and operation of the hydropower works.
So far efforts aimed at exploring small river energy have been spinning their wheels. A breakthrough could be achieved by the construction of a few pilot small-scale hydropower plants that could demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that stream flow energy application can be efficient and capable of yielding great economic benefit. First-priority sites fulfilling this purpose could be found the following: a small-scale hydropower plant with a capacity of 6 MW near the fish farm on the Pirenga River, which flows into Lake Imandra; a small-scale hydropower plant with a capacity of 1,250 kW on the Chavanga River in the southeastern part of the Kola Peninsula, seven kilometers from a village of the same name; and a small-scale hydropower plant with a capacity of 500 kW in the center of the peninsula, 12 kilometers from the village of Krasnoshchelye on the Elreka River, a tributary of the Ponoi River. The potential output of energy that these plants could generate would be 30% to 50% higher than that of the diesel power stations already in operation in these locations.
The Murmansk region also possesses a promising potential of wind energy, concentrated mostly in the coastal areas of the peninsula. The region’s technical wind energy resources are estimated to average 360 TWh, with the combined installed capacity of wind energy converters reaching around 120 million kW. The strongest and most persistent winds can be observed on the northern coast of the peninsula. This is in fact the windiest place in the whole of Russia’s European North, and thus, most abundant in the most accessible and economically advantageous energy source. Making use of even 1% to 2% of the estimated wind resources – which comes to 3 TWh to 7 TWh in power output, or 1 million to 2 million kW in energy capacity – can indeed play a very significant role in the region’s energy economy.
Several favorable premises warrant the application of wind energy resources on the territory of the Kola Peninsula:
- the high wind potential available across sizable areas of the region;
- the presence of prevailing winds (south and southwest winds), which will allow for the more compact and more cost-efficient arrangement of wind energy converters while installing them in the chosen location;
- the coincidence of winter maximum wind intensity with the maximum demand for electric energy and heating on the part of the consumer;
- the mutually complementary character of seasonal variations in wind energy and hydro energy which will enable them to supplement each other;
- the availability of 17 hydroelectric power plants with a combined capacity of over 1.5 million kW in operation on the Kola Peninsula; equipped with water reservoirs with daily, seasonal and multi-year regulation capable of compensating for uneven supply of energy from the wind energy converters.
Three major wind energy development trends can be identified in this regard:
- autonomous wind energy development, which implies that isolated wind energy converters operate to supply energy to isolated or remote consumer groups;
- system-based wind energy development, where a series of wind energy converters – or wind parks – operate as part of the grid;
- and, application of wind energy converters to cover the heating needs of consumers.
Non-integrated wind energy converters can enhance significantly the logistics of electric power supply for decentralized consumers, such as isolated settlements and villages, weather stations, beacons, border patrol quarters, sites of the Russian Northern Fleet, fishing and hunting camps, etc. Fuel supply for these energy users is challenging as they receive their energy from independent sources, such as diesel power stations, small gas-burning boilers, or primitive stoves. Operating in conjunction with these traditional heating sources, wind energy converters can replace between 30% and 50% - or as much as 70%, in the windiest areas – of the hard-to-obtain organic fuels.
System-based wind energy – or application of wind energy resources as part of the grid – is advisable primarily in locations where there is a high wind potential, usable roads to deliver large wind energy converter installations, and an access to the grid. It is preferable that such an area is located near hydroelectric power plants already in operation, or under construction. One site that fulfills all these requirements is the area encompassing the Serebryanka and Teriberka Hydropower Plants. It is a 40 square kilometer site, at the top of which are located the Teriberka and Dalniye Zelentsy settlements, the Serebryanka-1 Hydroelectric Power Plant and the 81st kilometer of the Murmansk-Tumanny highway (the Teriberka Exit). There are substantial prospects for the development of large-scale wind energy resources in this area.
Outside Russia, system-based wind energy has already developed to a self-standing, profitable sector of the energy economy, which makes considerable contributions to energy production in Germany, Denmark, Spain and other countries. In Russia, however, system-integrated wind energy is still in its infancy due to the financial and economic hardships of the past 15 years. At the same time, Russia has at its disposal the necessary scientific and production capabilities and has already developed the first experimental wind energy converters designed to the latest scientific and technological standards. Wind energy converters are already in operation near the northern city of Vorkuta, in the southern republic of Kalmykia, in the western enclave of Kaliningrad, and other parts of the country.
On the Kola Peninsula, one pilot wind energy converter model has been installed in cooperation with Norway. The 250 kW windmill near Murmansk is used to supply energy to the hotel Ogni Murmanska (Murmansk Lights). The next step in the region’s development of wind energy could be the construction of a wind park with a capacity of between 6,000 and 20,000 kW near the settlement of Teriberka on the coast of the Barents Sea. These efforts are the first steps towards development of system-based wind energy on the Kola Peninsula.
Using wind energy converters to supply heat implies participation of wind power installations in heating small towns and villages located in windy areas that are included in the centralized electric power supply, but experience difficulties in obtaining a stable supply of heating due to rising prices for organic fuel deliveries, namely, fuel oil. The favorable premises for the application of wind energy for heating purposes are the following:
- the heating season on the Kola Peninsula lasts for nine months, while wind speeds are noticeably higher during winter months than they are in the summer; therefore, the seasonal peak in heat energy demand on the part of the consumer coincides with that of the potential energy output from wind energy converters;
- using wind energy converters in these areas will allow transforming wind from a climatic factor prompting increased heat losses into a full-fledged energy source, which will provide for a steady flow of energy usable for heating purposes exactly during the windiest periods of the year;
- application of wind energy through wind energy converters will greatly facilitate saving on costly fuels delivered to the Kola Peninsula from locations as far away as 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers;
- using wind energy converters for heating purposes does not necessitate complying with the stern requirements normally applied to the quality of the wind-produced energy; this will allow making the wind energy converter design as simple as possible, rendering it both more cost-efficient and reliable;
- using wind for heating purposes enables control over the main disadvantage of wind energy: its variability across prolonged periods of time; seconds or minutes of lapses in the wind energy converter’s capacity can be smoothed over by the accumulating capability of the heating supply system, while longer fluctuations, lasting from ten minutes to several hours, will be compensated for by the accumulating capacities of the buildings covered by the heating supply; during very long periods of stillness, special auxiliary heat accumulating systems or heating sources running on organic fuels can be switched on as a backup;
On the whole, the Kola Peninsula has a vast potential of non-conventional and renewable energy sources at its disposal. It is introducing these energy sources into the region’s economy that presents the main scientific and technological challenge today. But finding a solution to this challenge will both help supply cost-efficient energy to a whole range of consumer groups and greatly reduce the region’s current energy dependence.«Previous Next» Back to report
