MegaFon provided underwater communication for employees of the Nizhny Novgorod Hydroelectric Power Station

2024: Mobile Internet launched underwater

MegaFon provided underwater communication for employees of the Nizhny Novgorod hydroelectric power station. The operator announced this on March 29, 2024.

source = MegaFon

The operator's engineers completed the project to install telecom equipment at the Nizhny Novgorod hydroelectric station located on the Volga River. A confident voice signal and high-speed mobile Internet have become available to employees of the hydroelectric power station in premises that are under water.

The large-scale construction is located in the city of Zavolzhye, Nizhny Novgorod Region. The hydroelectric power plant was built in the middle of the twentieth century, was repeatedly modernized and in March 2024 has an installed capacity of 530.5 MW. Numerous turbines, hydraulic units and technical rooms are located inside the concrete dam. Many mechanisms and structures are 30 meters below the water level in the Volga, which corresponds to a mark of 50 meters below world ocean level.

All equipment located in the dam serves more than 100 employees around the clock. If it is necessary to perform additional tasks, the number of workers increases to one and a half thousand or more. Now employees of the hydroelectric power station will be able to always stay in touch, quickly transmit the necessary information, exchange data with each other, and report emergency situations in a timely manner.

Work on the installation of telecom equipment in underwater premises was carried out for several months. During this time, MegaFon engineers installed more than a dozen radio frequency modules, laid thousands of meters of optical and electrical cables and installed about a hundred antennas in various places of the hydroelectric power station to provide a reliable signal in the premises.

Our employees work in particularly difficult conditions, in premises that go 10 floors under water. There's never been a mobile phone there before. The leadership of the hydroelectric power station understood that communication was necessary, in the event of an emergency, it was the price of health and even the lives of hundreds of people. Plus, the presence of mobile Internet will speed up the transfer of important information and simplify the maintenance of technological processes, - said Denis Korablev, engineer of the communications service, information and technological systems of the branch of PJSC RusHydro - Nizhny Novgorod Hydroelectric Power Station.

A large-scale project to install telecom equipment at the Nizhny Novgorod hydroelectric power station has become a kind of infrastructure challenge. The company's specialists had a serious responsibility, since the work was carried out at the enterprise, which provides energy to most of the region. After carrying out technical measures and testing equipment, communication and high-speed mobile Internet appeared in the corridors and premises of the station. I am sure that the convenience and comfort of using digital services will be appreciated not only by employees, but also by admirers of industrial tourism, because digital technologies will add attractiveness to a strategically important object, "said Nikolai Romanenko, director of corporate business development at MegaFon in the Center's regions and in the Urals.