Almaty CHPP-1: how it all began (Continued)

Almaty CHPP-1 is the first-born of large-scale energy in the Republic of Kazakhstan.
A sharp increase in the city’s demand for electrical and thermal energy

 

in the post-war period, it demanded qualitatively new approaches to the development of its energy base. This was also dictated by the complex large-scale tasks of transferring the energy sector of the republic to a modern basis, the consolidation of power plants, the broad start of work on the centralization of electricity supply and the development of district heating.
In 1960, the station was transformed into a combined heat and power plant – it became a centralized source of heat supply to the capital of Kazakhstan. This was preceded by significant work on the installation and commissioning of three hot water boilers

a unit thermal power of 100 Gcal/h, two high-pressure boilers with a steam output of 160 t/h each, and the transfer of individual low-efficiency turbines to operating mode with back pressure to carry the heating load. The following year, for the first time, about 12 thousand Gcal of thermal energy was supplied to the city.

The next stage is characterized for CHPP-1 by a rapid increase in the installed capacity for generating thermal and electrical energy. First of all, this is due to the decisive successes in the development of the republic’s electric power industry from 1961 to 1970, when the transition to industrial methods of constructing power plants, electrical networks and substations was carried out, and the energy sector was transferred to the sectoral management principle (1962).
In this decade, work continues at an accelerated pace to expand the installed capacity of the combined heat and power plant. Here, four more hot water boilers with a heating capacity of 100 Gcal/h each, the same number of high-pressure boiler units with a capacity of 160 tons of steam per hour, two heating turbines with a unit electric power of 60 MW, as well as an outdoor switchgear of outdoor switchgear – 110 kV are being commissioned.

Since 1970, the fuel balance of thermal power plants has used cheap and efficient fuel – natural gas. This made it possible to significantly increase the reliability of the thermal power plant and ensure uninterrupted heat and electricity supply to Almaty consumers. By the beginning of the 1980s, as a result of the extensive work done on the reconstruction and modernization of the main and auxiliary equipment, the introduction of scientific and technical developments, the installed electrical capacity of the thermal power plant increased 10 times compared to 1945, the thermal power amounted to 1025 Gcal/h, the production volume increased several times dozens of times, the specific fuel consumption for supplied electrical energy decreased almost seven times. CHPP-1 became one of the most economical not only in Kazakhstan, but in the Soviet Union, firmly ranked among the best power plants in the USSR in terms of specific fuel consumption for supplied electricity.

 

To be continued