On the History of the Development of Siberian Energy

I. N. Butakov

At the beginning of the 1890s, the first foundation of Siberia’s industrialization was being laid: the Great Siberian Railway was under construction. Temporary traffic along the entire West Siberian Railway (Ob–Krasnoyarsk) began in 1893, and on December 1, 1895, temporary traffic was opened on this line. The first train along the Tomsk branch passed on July 22, 1896 [1].

Railway construction brought great animation to the stagnant life of Siberia. In September 1894 the Tomsk City Duma considered the question of electric lighting for the city, together with estimates from the Moscow agency of the General Electricity Company in two versions: street lighting by arc lamps at a cost of 40,000 rubles, or by incandescent lamps at a cost of 31,587 rubles. The Duma rejected these proposals at that time, since “the cost of installing lighting far exceeded the city’s resources” [2]. It was then, for the first time in Tomsk and in Siberia generally, that the question of electric power for municipal needs was put before city self-government. This question received its practical resolution the following year, when on March 31, 1895, the city administration signed a contract with the Technical-Industrial Bureau & Co. concerning electric lighting for the city district from Bulvarnaya Street (Kirov Ave.), along Sadovaya Street (Timiryazev Ave.), Pochtamtskaya Street (Lenin Ave.), the embankment of the Ushaika River, the ascent to Voskresenskaya Hill, along Efremovskaya Street (Bakunin St.) to the “raskat,” along Magistratskaya Street (R. Luxemburg St.) to Rusakovsky Lane, along Millionnaya Street (Kommunistichesky Prospekt), including the squares of the new cathedral (Revolution Square) and the old cathedral. Under the contract, 25 lamps of 1,200 candles each were to be installed in this district; moreover, the installation costs were to be repaid by the city administration over the course of 6 years, while the Bureau would light the lamps free of charge. Private subscribers, however, paid 2 kopecks per hour of burning of a 16-candle lamp; wiring was at the subscribers’ expense [3].

The Tomsk electric power station was put into operation in 1895, with a steam engine of 66/88 kW. In 1899 it became necessary to install a second steam engine, with a single-phase current generator of 135/150 kW, and in 1909 the first turbogenerator of 350/425 kW, made by Westinghouse, appeared at the central power station. In 1913 a second turbogenerator, also of single-phase current, by Brown, Boveri & Co., was installed, so that by the beginning of the First World War the capacity of the Tomsk central power station was about 1,050 kW [4]. For provincial cities of Russia at that time this was a large capacity, for, as can be seen from the statistical data for 1911 published in the journal Elektrichestvo (1913, No. 10), few cities had such capacity. Thus, for example, in Rostov-on-Don, with 200 thousand inhabitants (Tomsk had about 80 thousand), the capacity of the central power station was 1,100 kW; in Orenburg (100 thousand inhabitants), 310 kW; in Kishinev (125 thousand), 480 kW; in Vilna (203 thousand), 850 kW; in Penza (80 thousand), 90 kW; in Smolensk (70 thousand), 300 kW; in Libava (83 thousand), 1,050 kW; in Irkutsk (100 thousand), 712 kW; and so on. It is no less interesting that in Tomsk the central power station po-

appeared earlier than in most provincial cities of old Russia. In 1893–1894 central electric stations began operating in Kazan, Chernigov, and Yekaterinograd. According to the statistical yearbook [5], in 1918–1920 the number of central electric stations in Russia in 1890–1895 was 5, including the Moscow and Petersburg central electric stations. In Siberia, central electric stations began to appear already in the twentieth century: for example, in Irkutsk—in 1910, in Chita—in 1906, in Omsk—in 1913, in Krasnoyarsk—in 1912, when their mass construction began also in most cities of the European part of Russia (Kiev—1900, Smolensk—1901, Yekaterinoslav—1902, Warsaw—1903, Riga—1905, Kherson—1908, Rostov-on-Don and Kishinev—1909, etc.). Of the 60 central electric stations registered in the aforementioned statistics for 1911, 40 operated on direct current; thus the Tomsk central electric station, which used single-phase alternating current, was a progressive one, and, moreover, it received turbogenerators earlier than the central electric stations of most other cities, while almost everywhere at that time steam engines were in operation. The first two turbogenerators appeared at the Moscow central electric station of the Society of 1886 in the period 1904–1906 [6]. The annual generation of electricity at the Tomsk central electric station in 1913 was about 600,000 kWh; the maximum load was 360 kW.

With the same installed capacity of 1050 kW, the Tomsk central electric station entered the revolutionary period. From the data of the statistical yearbook for 1918–1920 it is evident that, out of a total of 852 power stations in the country, only 48 stations had a capacity above 1000 kW; 677 had direct current, while for 88 central electric stations the type of current was unknown.

From what has been said, it is clear how weakly electrified Russia was. In terms of electricity generation it occupied fifteenth place, one of the last places among the countries of the world.

Even as of 1/IV-1926, the installed capacity of the Tomsk central electric station was still the same—1050 kW, the available capacity—850 kW, while electricity generation in the autumn-winter maximum (October–March) had begun to reach 1162.3 thousand kWh in 1924, and 1577 thousand kWh in 1925/26 [7].

In December 1925, Elektroplan under the Chief Energy Administration of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR recognized as expedient the installation at the Tomsk state district power station of a new turbogenerator of 1000 kW, and even as urgent in view of the need for reserve capacity, as well as because the existing capacity of the central electric station as early as the following year would not have been able to satisfy even the city’s lighting load [8]. Such a Brown-Boveri Co. turbogenerator was put into operation in 1928, and in the report for 1927–1928 the capacity of the Tomsk central electric station already appears as 1800 kW, and generation as 1809.8 thousand kWh, with a maximum of 750 kW. The steam engines had by this time been dismantled [9].

According to materials of the Central Statistical Administration, in 1925/26 in Siberia (excluding the Far East) there were already 14 public-use power stations with an installed capacity of 7831 kW, of which steam engines and locomobiles accounted for 37.7%, steam turbines for 61.1%, and internal-combustion engines for 1.2%. The entire power apparatus of industry consisted of 447 engines with a total installed capacity of 18.0 thousand kW, which at that time amounted to about 1% of the all-Union capacity. By type of engine the distribution was as follows: steam engines and locomobiles—72.7%, steam turbines—15.1%, internal-combustion engines—8%, water engines—4.2% [10].

A picture of the state of Soviet energy on the threshold of the first year of the five-year plan, showing the shifts that took place during the period from 1925–26, is provided by the two-volume publication of the USSR State Planning Committee, The Energy Economy of the USSR. At the beginning of 1928–29, in the Siberian region the number of public-use power stations had increased to 18, with an installed capacity of 16.2 thousand kW; the structure of their power apparatus was: steam turbines—88%, steam engines and locomobiles—9.9%, internal-combustion engines—2.1%,

Thus, the installed capacity of public electric power stations, as compared with 1925–26, increased by \(16.2 - 7.83 = 8.37\) thousand kW, or by 107%. The number of motors in industry was 581, and their installed capacity of 30.5 thousand kW constituted 1.2% of the installed industrial capacity of the USSR.

During the first five-year plan, the installed capacity of public electric power stations in Siberia changed by the end of each year as follows:

The decrease in installed capacity in 1932 is explained by the fact that the Novosibirsk municipal station, with a capacity of 5.5 MW, was transferred to the Glavenergo system. The output of this station in 1932 amounted to 28 mln. kWh [11], whereas in 1921 the N.-Nikolaevsk electric power station generated only 0.134 mln. kWh.

The larger municipal central electric power stations in Siberia had the following indicators during the years of the first five-year plan:

Beginning in 1931, in all the listed cities of Siberia the industrial load began to increase noticeably, in connection with which the values of the utilization coefficients of installed capacity began to rise sharply. The specific consumption of standard fuel at all the listed electric power stations is overstated, as a result of which the efficiency of the central electric power stations is low.

Among industrial electric power stations, some had considerable installed capacity for that time. Thus, as of January 1, 1932: Anzhero-Sudzhensk—7.3 MW, Prokopyevsk—5.0 MW, the central electric power station of the coke-chemical plant in the city of Kemerovo—5.0 MW, the central electric power station of the Lenin Mine—4.0 MW, the central electric power station

of the Belovo Zinc Plant—3.0 MW, and the thermal power station of the Yashkino Cement Plant—2.25 MW [12]. The total installed capacity of Siberia’s industrial power stations by the end of the First Five-Year Plan reached 53 MW (not counting the Kuznetsk Thermal Power Station), with an annual output of 139.2 million kWh.

In July 1930 the Sixteenth Congress of the VKP(b) was held; confirming the decision of the Party Central Committee of 15/V-30, it recorded in its resolutions: “The industrialization of the country cannot continue to rely on only one southern coal-and-metallurgical base. A vitally necessary condition for the rapid industrialization of the country is the creation in the East of a second coal-and-metallurgical center of the USSR through the use of the richest coal and ore deposits of the Urals and Siberia. At the same time, the Congress recognizes the need to force the development in the eastern regions (the Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia) of other branches of industry based on local raw-material resources.”

These decisions were of enormous importance in the history of Siberia’s industrialization. In this connection, work on the construction of the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant proceeded at an accelerated pace, and the first stage of its thermal power station was put into operation in 1932 with an installed capacity of 36 MW. In the period from 1933 to 1935, one turbogenerator of 24 MW capacity was put into operation at the Kuznetsk Thermal Power Station each year, so that the installed capacity of the thermal power station in 1935 was brought up to 108 MW [13]. In September 1930 work began on the construction of the foundations of the main building of the Kemerovo District Power Station [14], which entered service in 1934, when its output amounted to 42 million kWh with a utilization factor of 1050 hours/year. As of 1/I 1935, the installed capacity of the Kemerovo District Power Station was 48 kW [15]. In 1935 output was 121.9 million kWh with a utilization factor of 2539 hours/year. In 1936 output became 182.9 million kWh, with the equipment utilization factor already sufficient at 3800 hours/year [16].

In 1933 the Novosibirsk Right-Bank District Power Station received an increase in capacity to 11.5 MW, producing the following indicators of its operation over the 4 years of the Second Five-Year Plan [17]:

As can be seen, in the Second Five-Year Plan the Right-Bank District Power Station, in terms of specific fuel consumption, differed little from the leading municipal power stations of Siberia in the First Five-Year Plan, despite the high equipment utilization factors. The reduction in output at the Right-Bank District Power Station in 1936 is explained by the fact that in 1935 the Left-Bank District Power Station entered service with a 24 MW turbogenerator, with output in that year of 5.3 million kWh and a utilization factor of 1328 hours/year, and in the following year already 82.9 million kWh with a utilization factor of 3450 hours/year.

With the commissioning of the Kuznetsk, Kemerovo, and left-bank Novosibirsk power stations, Siberian energy advanced to a new stage of development, acquiring elevated pressures, regenerative feedwater heating, pulverized-coal firing, and so forth; that is, it joined in the modern average achievements of heat engineering. It is enough to point out, for example, that the Kemerovo GRES in the very first years of its operation had a specific consumption of reference fuel in 1935 and 1936 of 0.69 kg/kWh, while the left-bank Novosibirsk station already in its second year of operation (1936) had 0.79 kg/kWh.

The materials presented above concerning the second five-year plan are given in a fragmentary and incomplete form, since the systematic publication of summaries on Soviet energy was discontinued in 1937. Naturally, for the period of the second five-year plan it was possible to give only what appeared in print. If, at the end of the first five-year plan, the installed capacity of the power stations of the West Siberian and East Siberian territories amounted to \(98.5 + 24.7 = 123.2\) MW, with a total annual output of \(243.6 + 57.5 = 301.1\) million kWh, then according to the outlines of the second five-year plan the installed capacity in these territories was to reach \(441.2 + 125.05 = 566.25\) MW, with a total output of \(1917.9 + 468.9 = 1786.8\) million kWh. The latter was to increase by 541% in the West Siberian territory and by 815.5% in the East Siberian territory compared with 1932, whereas for the USSR as a whole this increase for the second five-year plan had been projected at 83.8% [18]. These figures marked the corresponding development of industry in Siberia, and in them was reflected the implementation of the decisions of the Sixteenth Party Congress. Already then, in the period immediately preceding the Patriotic War, a tendency toward shifting industry to the East had become apparent. The war accelerated this entirely natural process of bringing industry closer to the most powerful raw-material resources of our country, located in its East, thereby creating a rational distribution of industry in Russia from the standpoint of proximity to raw materials [19]. All this took place against the background of the powerful development of energy in our country, which made it possible for the USSR, at the end of the 1930s, to take third place in the world in electric-power generation after the USA and Germany. At present the USSR has taken first place in electric-power generation in Europe, surpassing England and France combined in this respect.

CITED LITERATURE

1. Verkhovskii V. M. — A Brief Historical Outline of the Beginning and Spread of Railways in Russia up to and including 1896. St. Petersburg, 1898, pp. 492, 496, 497.

2. State Archive, fond 127—1, file 2917.

3. State Archive, fond 3, file No. 4333.

4. News of the Tomsk City Public Administration, 1914, Nos. 27—28, Report of the subcommission for the valuation of power-station property, p. 24.

5. Statistical Yearbook, issue 11, 1922, Moscow, p. 281.

6. Kirpichnikov. — Development of the Moscow TsES of the Society of 1886. St. Petersburg, 1914, p. 3.

7. Electricity, 1926, No. 7, p. 33.

8. Electricity, 1926, No. 2, p. 126.

9. Factory and Plant Industry of the USSR. Moscow, 1929, issue II, pp. 87, 190.

10. Gosplan USSR. The Energy Economy of the USSR, vol. 1. Sotsekgiz, 1931, pp. 76, 97.

11. Moscow Energy Institute named after V. M. Molotov. Energy of the Regions of the USSR. ONTI NKTP USSR. Moscow, 1935, pp. 118—125.

12. General Plan for the Electrification of the USSR, vol. 8, part 1, Sotsekgiz, Moscow, 1932, p. 425.

13. Heat and Power, 1935, No. 4, p. 37.

14. Sokolovskii V. F. — The Kemerovo Electric Power Station. 1931, Novosibirsk, p. 21.

15. Electric Stations, 1935, No. 7, p. 52.

16. Electric Stations, 1936, No. 6, p. 48.

17. Electric Stations, 1937, Nos. 7, 8, p. 64.

18. The Second Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the USSR, vol. 1, Moscow, 1934, pp. 275—276.

19. Lenin V. I. — vol. XXII, p. 434.