Russia was unable to produce large turbines for Crimean thermal power plants

Moscow - Simferopol, November 25 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Stamm) - The need to build thermal power plants in Crimea has exposed Russia's lag where it is considered advanced - in the production of turbines. It turned out that if the Russian Federation makes turbines more powerful than 50 MW, they are ineffective, and installing several small domestic turbines in Crimea instead of one large one from Siemens or GE is unprofitable. Moreover, in the spring, when Moscow announced the construction of two gas thermal power plants in Crimea, for some reason they did not remember this. Either the Russian government was hoping for the lifting of sanctions, or officials have no idea what the country is able to do and what it cannot do.

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The start of construction of two large gas power plants in Crimea is hampered by EU and US sanctions that prohibit the supply of energy equipment to the peninsula. Russian machine manufacturers cannot offer medium- and high-power gas turbines that are competitive in terms of efficiency. As an alternative, Rosseti and the Crimean authorities propose distributed generation in blocks of 25-50 MW in connection with gas networks, which will lead to an increase in the cost of the project by 40%, but the Ministry of Energy does not support the idea, writes Kommersant.

The Crimean authorities are discussing an alternative option for the development of the region’s energy sector based on distributed low-power generation instead of two large thermal power plants, head of the legislative assembly of Sevastopol Alexey Chaly told Kryminform. According to him, such a scenario will avoid Western sanctions on equipment supplies. Instead of turbines with a capacity of 90-100 MW, it is planned to use domestic ones of 25 MW and 50 MW, Mr. Chaly explained. He added that low-power units are easier to tie into gas distribution networks.

However, the Ministry of Energy said yesterday that they do not support the idea. According to the initial April plan of the Ministry of Energy, it is planned to build two gas-fired thermal power plants in Crimea with a total capacity of 770 MW to supply energy to the peninsula; the site for one of them with a capacity of 400 MW was called the Simferopol State District Power Plant.

Meanwhile, the Proton-Perm Motors company produces 25 MW gas turbines. Alexey Dub from the Union of Mechanical Engineers of Russia notes that gas turbines with a capacity of 110 MW are produced by Saturn, part of the United Engine Corporation, but they are inferior in maintenance costs to foreign analogues.

The competitiveness of Russian machine builders has remained only in the nuclear, hydro and coal generation sectors, notes Renaissance Capital analyst Vladimir Sklyar. In such a situation, he believes, the decision to use low-power gas turbines looks logical - this will eliminate the problem of supply limitations and reduce construction time to one year instead of one and a half to two years. However, in terms of unit cost, “nothing can compare” with large CCGT units with a capacity of 410 MW from Siemens and GE, Sklyar emphasizes, distributed generation will be 40% more expensive, costs will be about $1,3-1,4 thousand per 1 kW of installed capacity.

According to Alexey Duba, if a decision is made to deploy distributed generation, it would be most effective to build two-unit stations with turbines with a capacity of 12-16 MW. They are also produced by Saturn.