Power industry - what is it? Development and problems of the electric power industry in Russia

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

The industry of any country consists of a large number of diverse industries, such as engineering or electricity. These are the directions in which a particular country is developing, and different countries may have different accents depending on many factors, such as natural resources, technological development, and so on. This article will focus on one very important and actively developing industry today - the electric power industry. The electric power industry is an industry that has been constantly developing for many years, but it is in recent years that it has begun to actively move forward, pushing humanity to use more environmentally friendly energy sources.

What is this?

So, first of all, you need to figure out what this industry is all about. The electric power industry is a subdivision of the energy sector, which is responsible for the production, distribution, transmission and sale of electrical energy. Among other branches of this sphere, it is the electric power industry that is the most popular and widespread at once for a number of reasons. For example, due to the ease of its distribution, the possibility of transferring it over great distances in the shortestintervals of time, and also because of its versatility - electrical energy can be easily transformed, if necessary, into other types of energy, such as thermal, light, chemical, and so on. Thus, it is the development of this industry that the governments of world powers pay great attention to. The electric power industry is the branch of industry that holds the future. This is what many people think, and that is why you need to get to know it in more detail with the help of this article.

Power generation progress

To fully understand how important this industry is to the world, you need to look at how the power industry has evolved throughout its history. It is immediately worth noting that electricity production is indicated in billions of kilowatts per hour. In 1890, when the electric power industry was just beginning to develop, only nine billion kWh were produced. The big leap took place by 1950, when more than a hundred times more electricity was being produced. Since then, development has taken giant strides - every decade, several thousand billion kW / h were added at once. As a result, by 2013, the world powers produced a total of 23,127 billion kWh - an incredible figure that continues to grow every year. To date, China and the United States of America provide the most electricity - these are the two countries that have the most developed electricity industries. China accounts for 23 percent of the world's energyelectricity, and the share of the United States - 18 percent. They are followed by Japan, Russia and India - each of these countries has at least a four times smaller share in world electricity production. Well, now you also know the general geography of the electric power industry - it's time to move on to specific types of this industry.

Thermal power industry

You already know that the electric power industry is an energy industry, and the energy industry itself, in turn, is an industry as a whole. However, the branching does not end there - there are several types of electric power industry, some of them are very common and are used everywhere, others are not so popular. There are also alternative areas of the electric power industry, where non-traditional methods are used to achieve large-scale production of electricity without harm to the environment, as well as neutralizing all the negative features of traditional methods. But first things first.

First of all, it is necessary to talk about the thermal power industry, as it is the most common and well-known all over the world. How is electricity generated in this way? It is easy to guess that in this case, thermal energy is converted into electrical energy, and thermal energy is obtained by burning various types of fuel. Combined heat and power plants can be found in almost every country - this is the easiest and most convenient way to obtain large amounts of energy at low cost. However, this process is one of the most harmfulfor the environment. Firstly, natural fuel is used to generate electricity, which is guaranteed to run out someday. Secondly, combustion products are released into the atmosphere, poisoning it. That is why there are alternative methods of generating electricity. However, these are far from all traditional types of electric power industry - there are others, and further we will concentrate on them.

Nuclear power industry

As in the previous case, when considering nuclear power, you can learn a lot from the name. The generation of electricity in this case is carried out in nuclear reactors, where the splitting of atoms and the fission of their nuclei occur - as a result of these actions, a large release of energy occurs, which is then transformed into electrical energy. It is unlikely that anyone else knows that this is the most unsafe electric power industry. The industry of far from every country has its share in the global production of nuclear electricity. Any leak from such a reactor can lead to catastrophic consequences - just think of Chernobyl, as well as accidents in Japan. However, more and more attention has been paid to safety recently, so nuclear power plants are being built further.

Hydropower

Another popular way to generate electricity is to get it from water. This process takes place in hydroelectric power plants, it does not require dangerous processes of fission of the nucleus of the atom, nor environmentally harmful combustion of fuel, buthas its drawbacks too. Firstly, this is a violation of the natural flow of rivers - dams are built on them, due to which the necessary flow of water into the turbines is created, due to which energy is obtained. Often, due to the construction of dams, rivers, lakes and other natural reservoirs are drained and die, so it cannot be said that this is an ideal option for this energy industry. Accordingly, many power industry enterprises are turning not to traditional, but to alternative types of electricity generation.

Alternative Electricity

Alternative power industry is a collection of types of power industry that differ from traditional ones mainly in that they do not require any kind of harm to the environment, and also do not endanger anyone. We are talking about hydrogen, tidal, wave and many other varieties. The most common of these are wind and solar energy. It is on them that the emphasis is placed - many believe that they are the future of this industry. What is the essence of these species?

Wind energy is the generation of electricity from the wind. Windmills are built in the fields, which work very efficiently and provide energy not much worse than the methods previously described, but at the same time, only wind is needed to operate the windmills. Naturally, the disadvantage of this method is that the wind is a natural element that cannot be subjugated, but scientists are working to improve the functionality of modern windmills. As for solar energy, hereelectricity is obtained from sunlight. As in the case of the previous view, here it is also necessary to work on increasing the storage capacity, since the sun does not always shine - and even if the weather is cloudless, in any case, at some point there comes a night when the solar panels are not able to produce electricity.

Power transmission

Well, now you know all the main types of generating electricity, however, as you could already understand from the definition of the term electric power industry, getting everything is not limited to. Energy must be transferred and distributed. Thus, electrical energy is transmitted through power lines. These are metal conductors that create one large electrical network throughout the world. Previously, overhead lines were most often used - you can see them along the roads, thrown from one pillar to another. Recently, however, cable lines that are laid underground have become very popular.

History of the development of the Russian electric power industry

Russia's electric power industry began to develop at the same time as the world's - in 1891, when the transmission of electric power for almost two hundred kilometers was successfully carried out for the first time. In the realities of pre-revolutionary Russia, the electric power industry was incredibly underdeveloped - the annual electricity generation for such a huge country was only 1.9 billion kWh. When the revolution took place, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin proposed a plan for the electrification of Russia, the implementation of which was launched immediately. Already toIn 1931, the planned plan was fulfilled, but the speed of development was so impressive that by 1935 the plan was overfulfilled three times. Thanks to this reform, by 1940, the annual electricity generation in Russia amounted to 50 billion kW / h, which is twenty-five times more than before the revolution. Unfortunately, the dramatic progress was interrupted by the Second World War, but after its completion, work was restored, and by 1950 the Soviet Union was generating 90 billion kW / h, which was about ten percent of the total electricity generation around the world. By the mid-sixties, the Soviet Union had taken second place in the world in terms of electricity production and was second only to the United States. The situation remained at the same high level until the collapse of the USSR, when the electric power industry was far from the only industry that was badly affected by this event. In 2003, a new Federal Law on the electric power industry was signed, within the framework of which the rapid development of this industry in Russia should take place in the coming decades. And the country is definitely moving in that direction. However, it is one thing to sign the Federal Law on the electric power industry, and quite another to implement it. This is what will be discussed next. You will learn about the current problems of the Russian electric power industry, as well as what ways will be chosen to solve them.

Excess power generation capacity

Russia's power industry is already in much better shape than ten years ago, so it's safe to say that progress is being made. Howeverat a recent energy forum, the main problems of this industry in the country were identified. And the first of these is the overcapacity of electricity generation, which was caused by the mass construction of low-capacity power plants in the USSR instead of the construction of a small number of high-capacity power plants. All these stations still need to be serviced, so there are two ways out of the situation. The first is the decommissioning of capacities. This option would be ideal if not for the huge cost of such a project. Therefore, Russia is likely to move towards the second exit, namely the increase in consumption.

Import substitution

After the introduction of western stations, the Russian industry felt very acutely its dependence on foreign supplies - this also greatly affected the electric power industry, where practically in none of the modern fields of activity the full process of production of certain generators took place exclusively on the territory of the Russian Federation. Accordingly, the government plans to increase production capacities in the right areas, control their localization, and also try to get rid of dependence on imports as much as possible.

Clean air

The problem is that modern Russian companies operating in the power industry pollute the air a lot. However, the Ministry of Ecology of the Russian Federation tightened the legislation and began to collect fines for violation of established norms more often. Unfortunately, companies suffering from this do not plan to try to optimize their production - they throw all their efforts intocrush the “greens” with numbers, and demand easing of the legislation.

Billions in debt

Today, the total debt of electricity users throughout Russia is about 460 billion Russian rubles. Naturally, if the country had at its disposal all the money that was owed to it, then it could develop the electric power industry much faster. Therefore, the government plans to tighten pen alties for late payments on electricity bills, and will also encourage those who do not want to pay their bills in the future to install their own solar panels and supply themselves with energy.

Regulated market

The main problem of the domestic electric power industry is the complete regulation of the market. In European countries, regulation of the energy market is almost completely absent, there is real competition there, so the industry is developing at a tremendous pace. All these rules and regulations hinder development very much, and as a result, the Russian Federation has already started buying electricity from Finland, where the market is practically unregulated. The only solution to this problem is to move to a free market model and deregulate completely.