Eestile oma 100Mw hüdroelektrijaam Narva jõe vesikonda

In Narva there is a 120 MW hydroelectric power plant that produces on average about 640 GWh of electricity per year. Unfortunately, it is under Russian control and supplies electricity to the Russian power grid.

In principle, Estonia should be entitled to half of the hydropower potential of Lake Peipsi’s outflow. However, reaching an agreement with Russia through negotiations is currently almost impossible, considering the present leadership and political attitude.

Therefore, the idea of building Estonia’s own hydroelectric power plant at the Narva River water intake should be considered.

Since the gates of the existing hydroelectric plant are controlled by Russia, constructing a new plant next to the current Narva station would leave its operation dependent on the mood of the Russian side. In addition, such a plant would have a relatively low efficiency because the height difference there is small. For this reason, it could be more practical to build a canal from Auvere to the village of Udria (Perjatsi or Pimestiku).

Using data and calculations found with the help of AI, it would be possible to construct a 15–20 m wide and 20–25 m deep canal from Auvere to Udria and build a 100 MW hydroelectric power plant, assuming the canal is lined with concrete. A canal of this width could also be covered to form a tunnel, meaning the land above would not be lost and would still allow animals and people to cross over it. It could even be used to install solar panels or other infrastructure above the canal. With a narrow and deep canal, bridges would also be cheaper and easier to build, and the problem of freezing would disappear.

A canal made of natural material would have to be several times wider to avoid erosion and reduce flow resistance. Such a natural canal could be built in the upper sections near the Narva River and in former oil-shale quarries, where the canal could be about 100 m wide (or wider if used as a reservoir) and about 10 m deep, extending a few meters below the natural riverbed of the Narva River.

In the Auvere area, the depth of the Narva River is 5–8 m depending on the water level, and the level of the Narva reservoir does not significantly affect the water level there. Therefore, the neighboring country would not have the ability to influence the operation of Estonia’s hydroelectric plant.

Although the height difference between Lake Peipsi and the Gulf of Finland is about 30 m, it decreases to about 25 m in the Auvere area. A canal built directly from Lake Peipsi would be about twice as long and would pass through a nature protection area. A canal starting from Auvere, however, would partly pass through existing quarries and areas where oil shale has not yet been mined, meaning that the cost of building some canal sections could partly be covered by the value of the extracted oil shale.

The proposed hydroelectric power plant would be particularly useful during periods without wind, when wind power production is low.

Although a 100 MW plant would be relatively small compared with existing wind farms—for example, the Tootsi-Sopi wind farm alone is about 2.5 times more powerful—it would still provide valuable support. Since electricity prices are usually higher during calm wind conditions, the payback period of the Udria hydropower plant would likely not be very long.

With half of the annual water flow of the Narva River, the Udria hydropower plant could operate at full capacity for about 161 days per year.

If the plant had operated only during the most expensive electricity hours of last year, it would have generated about €77 million in revenue. The construction cost estimated with the help of AI could be about €500 million, and even if another similar amount were reserved as a contingency, the total would still be roughly comparable to the construction cost of the Auvere oil-shale power plant at today’s prices.

If the Udria hydropower plant operated at full capacity and the Narva hydropower plant also generated about 100 MW, the water level in the Narva reservoir would drop by about 41 cm per day. Since water level management is handled by the current operator of the Narva plant—Russia—the uneven production of the Udria plant would also make the production of the Narva plant uneven. However, in Russia’s large electricity grid, a 100 MW change in production is hardly noticeable, especially since they would have a day or more to react. In any case, that would not really be our concern.

If a reservoir were built in former oil-shale quarries, the Udria hydropower plant could also function to a limited extent as a pumped-storage plant, pumping some seawater into reservoirs through the canal during negative electricity price periods and later generating electricity from it again.

Thanks to the greater height difference, it would be possible to produce about 380 GWh of electricity per year from half of the Narva River’s annual water volume (6.3 km³ out of 12.6 km³). This would be renewable energy with a large initial investment but low operating costs.

To generate the same amount of electricity using oil shale, it would be necessary to mine, transport from the mine to the Auvere power plant, crush, and burn about 380,000 tons of oil shale, which corresponds to more than 12,000 truckloads of mineral resources.

We request that the Riigikogu establish an initiative group to examine the possibility of constructing a hydroelectric power plant at the Narva River water intake.