BELARUSTV — broadcast
20260813 083000 UTC
136 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
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Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:00:44] Thanks to my profession, I have visited many different corners of our
[00:00:48] country, but every time I admire the beauty of
[00:00:51] Belarusian nature, endless forests, fields,
[00:00:55] thousands of lakes and picturesque rivers, and
[00:00:58] water is our... national treasure,
[00:01:02] but have you ever thought that it's not just
[00:01:04] beauty, but also a powerful source of energy?
[00:01:19] After all, water is one of the most rebellious elements on the planet, it is capable
[00:01:22] of destroying roads, flooding entire villages, but in this case, man
[00:01:26] found a way to come to terms with nature, hydroelectric power plants.
[00:02:30] and environmentally friendly generation, without harmful
[00:02:33] emissions into the atmosphere. The largest complexes are the Vitebsk
[00:02:37] HPP and
[00:02:37] Polotsk.
[00:02:45] The Vitebsk hydroelectric power plant is the most
[00:02:48] powerful in the country. It is located on the Western Dvina, one of the
[00:02:52] largest rivers in Belarus, second in terms of
[00:02:54] water content after the Dnieper. Its length is 328
[00:02:58] km, average width. The channel varies from 50 to
[00:03:02] 300 m. The current is quite fast, which allows
[00:03:06] it to be a source of energy. The local HPP is
[00:03:09] a typical run-of-river, low-head
[00:03:11] hydroelectric power plant, including
[00:03:14] concrete, overflow and earthfill
[00:03:17] dams, a switchyard.
[00:03:21] Let's go through the main characteristics: annual electricity generation
[00:03:25] is 138 million kilowatt-hours, power
[00:03:28] is 40 MW, reservoir area. 1.82 hectares,
[00:03:32] capacity just over 4 million cubic meters,
[00:03:35] commissioned in 2017.
[00:03:38] According to project
[00:03:41] values, the HPP should generate 138 million
[00:03:45] kilowatt-hours per year. In
[00:03:48] practice, if we take the statistics for the last 5 years, this figure has
[00:03:51] fluctuated from 127 to 157 million
[00:03:55] kWh per year, but this all depends on the river's
[00:03:58] filling, because. the main and only source of energy
[00:04:01] is the water in the Western Dvina river.
[00:04:04] Our generation depends on the year, on precipitation, on
[00:04:08] snow cover in winter. A large
[00:04:12] hydroelectric power plant could have appeared here much earlier, in
[00:04:15] 1956 the Vitebsk Sea project
[00:04:18] was created. Its main goal was a global economic and
[00:04:22] ecological restructuring of the region. 15
[00:04:25] research institutes of the USSR
[00:04:28] planned to turn the upper reaches of the Western Dvina into a powerful
[00:04:32] energy and transport hub, and a powerful Vitebsk HPP
[00:04:35] was also planned here. The artificial sea would create
[00:04:39] a gigantic head of water, necessary for the turbines to operate at full
[00:04:43] capacity. The river was supposed to become part of the country's deepwater
[00:04:46] transport system, which would allow large-tonnage
[00:04:50] vessels to freely travel from the regional center to the Baltic
[00:04:54] Sea and back, but the idea remained
[00:04:57] just an idea. At that time for its implementation.
[00:05:12] For electricity, the question of building
[00:05:15] a cascade of hydroelectric power plants on the Western Dvina river, consisting of
[00:05:19] four stations, was worked out: the Vitebsk hydroelectric power plant,
[00:05:21] Beshenkovichi HPP,
[00:05:25] Polotsk HPP and Verkhnenskaya HPP. All this
[00:05:28] began with the implementation of the Vitebsk HPP.
[00:05:40] If we talk about the current stage of the HPP's operation,
[00:05:44] four horizontal capsule hydro units
[00:05:48] with a capacity of 10 MW each are installed here. The energy generated as a result of water pressure
[00:05:51] goes to a step-up transformer
[00:05:55] substation. Passing through the winding turns, every
[00:05:58] 10 kW received increases to 110. All
[00:06:02] the electricity generated here is sent to
[00:06:06] the common looped system, so it is impossible to say exactly where it
[00:06:09] is used, but it is understandable.
[00:06:39] Here we have, for example, a little churning right now. How expedient is it to build, construct, and operate a HPP then? Well, regarding the churning? This so-called
[00:06:43] churning is the exit of water from the flow-through
[00:06:47] turbine, that is, it is a water flow that rushes from
[00:06:50] the upper pool and presses on the turbine blades, exits into the
[00:06:53] lower pool, and creates such churning.
[00:06:57] The generation of electricity, yes, as you
[00:07:00] said, in mountainous areas there are more powerful
[00:07:03] hydroelectric power plants. Our operating principle is similar, but due to
[00:07:07] the fact that we have a small difference between the levels of the upper
[00:07:10] pool and the level of the lower pool of water, that is, as
[00:07:14] I said, the nominal head is 9.1 m.
[00:07:17] For the simple layman, head is the difference
[00:07:21] in water levels. Due to the difference in water levels, we create
[00:07:24] a head. That's why 10 MW turbines were designed
[00:07:28] here, because it was not expedient
[00:07:32] to install more powerful turbines here. At the Vitebsk
[00:07:35] HPP, taking into account round-the-clock operation, 29
[00:07:38] people work, 10 of whom are operational personnel, and 19
[00:07:42] are managers, specialists, and workers. The work is fully
[00:07:45] automated, readings from all sensors are displayed on
[00:07:49] a special panel. In the machine hall, at a depth of seven floors,
[00:07:52] hydro units are installed. Every
[00:07:55] second, about 70 cubic meters of water pass
[00:07:58] through the generator's guide vanes. When the river is full, their
[00:08:02] number reaches 123
[00:08:04] cubic meters.
[00:08:10] On your screens, the navigable.
[00:08:13] Let's clarify immediately, it does not belong to energy workers,
[00:08:16] although it is located on the territory of the Vitebsk HPP, but it cannot
[00:08:20] be ignored, it is very impressive. This is
[00:08:23] a single-chamber, single-line lock, the length of the usable chamber
[00:08:27] is the inner part, limited by special signs or
[00:08:30] gates, whose dimensions allow a vessel to be safely placed and passed,
[00:08:34] 94 m, width
[00:08:37] 13.5 m, water level difference 13
[00:08:40] m.
[00:08:45] In the Vitebsk region there is the second most powerful station,
[00:08:48] речь of the Polotsk HPP. It is also located on the Western Dvina -
[00:08:52] it is a low-head run-of-river station,
[00:08:55] including an earthfill and concrete overflow dam
[00:08:58] with six segmented gates. The design
[00:09:02] head is almost 8 m. Let's compare the characteristics
[00:09:05] of the two complexes. The capacity of Polotsk is slightly more than
[00:09:08] 21.5 megawatts, Vitebsk -
[00:09:12] 40. Average annual generation - 112 million
[00:09:15] kilowatt-hours versus 138, the number of
[00:09:18] hydro units at Polotsk is 5 turbines, at Vitebsk
[00:09:21] 4. We are in the machine hall, here we have
[00:09:25] the main equipment located. They
[00:09:28] consist of five hydro units.
[00:09:31] We are directly next to the steel penstock,
[00:09:35] in which the main
[00:09:39] hydraulic power equipment is located.
[00:09:42] Here at the moment we have the multiplier itself,
[00:09:45] that is, it is a gear transmission that transmits
[00:09:49] the rotational moment to
[00:09:52] the generator, and this energy is converted into electricity
[00:09:56] by means of the generator's excitation system and is then
[00:10:00] transmitted to the substation, released into the grid. The Polotsk HPP
[00:10:03] is designed taking into account the ecology of lowland rivers. The low head
[00:10:07] of water minimizes flooding of the surrounding
[00:10:10] territory, preserving the natural landscape. Again, everything
[00:10:13] is automated, that is, you don't need to turn valves
[00:10:17] manually, the computer itself calculates how much water flows in the river and
[00:10:20] automatically changes the angle of inclination of the blades to
[00:10:24] generate... maximum current. If the level
[00:10:27] drops, accordingly,