Zhiguli Hydroelectric Station - History

History

The idea of hydroelectric station on the Volga near Samara Bend was proposed by Gleb Krzhizhanovsky in 1910. Ten years later K. V. Bogoyavlensky proposed a hydroelectruc station near Perevoloki, utilizing naturally existing water level difference. The disrupted economic system of the time did not allow this project to be realized.

In the early 1930s the Volga near Samara Bend and Yaroslavl was surveyed, and some dam projects were proposed. In 1937 the project of a dam near the villages of Perevoloki and Krasnaya Glinka was approved. Forced labour from Kuybyshev Camp was used (up to 30,000 people). In the autumn of 1940, oil fields were found near construction site, causing a suspension of construction.

The Hydroproject Institute made a survey in 1949, after which a decision was made to build the hydroelectric station near Zhigulyovsk. On 21 August 1950, the project to create a station with installed power of 2.1 gigawatts was approved. Construction was started, as before, with forced labour used. Construction was completed in 1957.

Read more about this topic:  Zhiguli Hydroelectric Station

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
    —Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    “There is a history in all men’s lives,
    Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
    The which observed, a man may prophesy,
    With a near aim, of the main chance of things
    As yet not come to life.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)