RusHydro began construction of a new spillway on the Yegorlykskaya hydropower plant on Kuban’ River

The new spillway will be used for water discharges and will replace the existing 50 year-old spillway of lower capacity. The construction works will be completed by the end of 2014. The cost of construction is estimated at RUB 212.4 mn.

The capacity of new spillway will be 120 m3/s, allowing full water passage even in case of full outage of the turbines. Combined pass-through capacity of the hydropower plant (the spillway plus the turbines) will total 250 m3/s, which is sufficient to withstand even extreme floods.

The spillway will be built of monolithic concrete, and will be 517 meters long and 17.6 meters wide. The Yegorlykskaya station, built in 1956-1962, comprises 1320 meter long landfill dam, intake canal, tower spillway, discharge canal of the spillway and turbine building housing 2 hydropower units with combined capacity of 30 MW.

The rehabilitation and modernization of the cascade of Kubanskiye HPPs is implemented by RusHydro and AlstomHydro under agreement signed in 2011. The project covers comrehensive modernization of eight hydropower plants and one pumped-storage plant. One of the 9 plants, comprising the cascade – the Yegorlykskaya HPP-2, is not included in the project as it is newly built and commissioned in 2011. Alstom will manufacture equipment and will supervise installation and pre-launch testing. The key component is introduction of automated centralized control of the cascade from the town of Nevinnomyssk.

Comprehensive modernization program of RusHydro's generation fleet for 2012-2025 provides for replacement of 55% of turbines, 42% of generators, 61% of transformers. This modernization will result in significant reliability, efficiency and security improvement of RusHydro generating facilities, increase in installed capacity of 779 MW as compared to the beginning of 2011. Expected gain in electricity generation will amount to 1,376 GWh.