Where the Boguchany Aluminum Smelter gets its electricity from.

In yesterday’s post, I told you all about the operations at the Boguchany Aluminum Plant and its herculean appetite for electricity. I mentioned hydroelectric power in passing yesterday too – and not without good reason: for it’s this that satisfies this appetite at the aluminum plant. So off we popped, next door, to the Boguchany (hydroelectric) Dam…

And here she is – the beaut:

First, a stroll around the machine hall:

Turbine and Generator No. 1. The floor here vibrates slightly under your feet – a reminder of what’s taking place a few meters below you.

Hydroelectric power plants are totally unique, totally mind-blowing structures:

And at the end of our trip we were treated to some stunning views over the Angara River:

Now for a bit of background and personal context with regard to hydroelectric power generation in general…

How many hydroelectric dams/power-plants have I already explored and seen the insides of? Hmmm, which end of the list should I begin with? I guess geographically – from west to east. That makes sense, since it’s “left to right”. And not coincidentally that also matches the scale of the structures and the amount of energy produced…

// For the curious – here‘s a ranking of the world’s largest hydroelectric plants.

So which have I visited? Here we go…

1. Itaipu, on the Brazil-Paraguay border. The border runs literally down the middle of the dam! See the yellow line? That’s it!! ->

Everything’s just soooo gigantic! ->

Watching the excess water being released: impressive…

…Especially up close:

2. Glen Canyon Dam, Arizona, U.S.A. To be honest, I’m not even sure if this plant is operating now due to the dropping reservoir levels throughout the Colorado River basin. But when I was there – the sights were absolutely magical! ->

These are the headwaters of none other than the Grand Canyon:

As per: enormous, brutal, awesome! ->

3. The Volzhskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant. Built between 1950 and 1962, it was at the time the largest hydroelectric power plant in the world. Been, seen, snapped.

Here’s a turbine and its blades. They put me right next to it to give you an idea of scale:

4. The Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Plant. I was there in 2012 and – dam! – was absolutely blown away!

Reinforced concrete carved right into the surrounding rock. There’s just no way to put into words what it’s like to see it. You have to experience it. Especially in winter and at night: the bulk of the dam with the landscape around it makes it feel like something out of a sci-fi film. Actually, I’ve never seen “Alien” in full – just a few snippets, but I was still reminded of the film by this somehow:

5. Krasnoyarsk Dam. We stopped there in 2022 on our road trip from Magadan to Moscow. Yes – the Magadan near… Japan, and yes – the Moscow in European Russia! A good, solid hydroelectric plant ) ->

But for some reason, nothing particularly memorable stuck with me about it.

6. Kolyma Hydroelectric Station. Whoa! This was something else. It was in January, with the temperature around -45°C and with a strong wind, but the water… still came out of the turbines in liquid form! It doesn’t freeze for another few kilometers as it flows down the river: before it does – you can take a dip!

The inside of the power plant is as brutal as outside it. The machine hall, the utility tunnels – it’s all cut straight into solid rock. I guess you just can’t do it any other way given the climatatic realities here.

The machine hall is also carved into a tunnel right in the rock.

6. Three Gorges Dam, China.

Alas – you can’t get closer than 200 meters to this dam; what’s more – this pic of mine was taken almost a kilometer away from it. So I can’t really include this hydroelectric gravity dam (!) in my list of been-to’s…

Three Gorges is the biggest hydro plant on the planet (who knew?!), generating 22.5 gigawatts of fresh electricity (installed capacity). Fuse mind-blowing! I don’t really have other words for it right now. But maybe some will come later…

Majestic, monumental… what else can I say?

But what’s this?…

Take a closer look at the previous photo – there’s a bridge there, right? Judging by the water-line marks on the dam, it should be underwater when the reservoir’s full. So how’s that possible? I’ve thought this over and over, but still don’t get it. How can they build a bridge that gets submerged from time to time when the dam raises the water level up above it? How does that even work? Here it is on Google Maps – actually submerged:

That’s an old photo from 2016. Meanwhile, a more recent photo, on Yandex Maps, shows it non-submerged:

Yeah, a mystery. But I’m sure there’s a perfectly sound (and no doubt innovative) reason for it – you know the Chinese ).

All right – enough lists and gawd-dam nostalgia! Let’s get back to the Krasnoyarsk Krai and the Boguchany Dam….

There’s a little museum and a brief overview of the works. Actually, what we see here is just the very top part of the station. There’s way more hidden underwater – bigger, more complicated, and even more massive. Only the top of the dam and the machine hall stick out above water – the rest is all below.

A stroll along the top section:

A crane for closing off spillways:

And more pics:

Next – on to the machine hall. Never been inside a hydro plant’s machine hall, or seen how things are put together? Here’s what it’s like:

Amazingly clean! Which makes sense – the plant’s fairly new (though it’s been producing electricity since 2012, its construction was fully completed only in 2017).

Here’s what the top of a turbine looks like:

It’s a pretty wild feeling standing on a slightly vibrating patch of floor, right above an operating turbine – where under your feet there are three or four floors of fast-spinning machinery, and the whole setup weighs more than a thousand tons!

Tour done; time to be heading (flying) back to Krasnoyarsk…

Along the way, the weather treated us to some truly gorgeous views of the Angara River:

And for dessert – sunset!

But I’m still not done with the Krasnoyarsk Krai industrial theme yet – so stay tuned!…