Lines of history: Valery Sauranovich Torlambayev, pensioner, chairman of the AIC Board in the late 90s

I was born in Belaya Tserkov, a town 80 kilometers south-west of Kiev. I always dreamed of becoming a pilot like my father. I even wanted to apply to a military school, but my father was strongly against it: he served in an emergency division, went through the war, and witnessed many terrible things. In the spring of 1962, the regiment in which my father served was transferred from Poland to Kazakhstan. The pilots were flown in by planes, and their families travelled in heated freight cars, it was in spring. So we ended up in Alma-Ata and that is why in 1965 I graduated from school №41.

At first I still tried to enter the flying school, but I got a “rejection” because of my health. Then I had to give up my dream and ran to the Almaty Polytechnic Institute, to the geophysical faculty, not even knowing what it was. I just asked where there was a lower level of competition, and I was advised the geophysical group, where I then enrolled. That is why my first education was not in the power engineering field.

After graduating from the institute, I worked in my specialty for a year and a half. By that time I was already married, had a daughter, and I was a bit stressed by the “in-field life”. As a result, I decided to change my profession and in 1972 I was transferred to the power industry – I was employed in the fuel and transport shop of Alma-Ata CHPP-1 as a deputy shop manager.

There were still a lot of veterans working at the station at that time. My mentor was my friend Ivan Nikolayevich Shchetkin. He worked as a foreman and had only 10 grades of education, but he had worked at CHPP all his life and for everyone he was a great authority at the station. I remember there was even an expression back then: “Shchetkin’s drive”. It was required when electricity was cut off at electrically controlled gate valves, requiring two people to manually turn the huge gate valves with a spanner. That very thing was the “Shchetkin drive”.

CHPP-1 and several boiler houses were the only sources of heat supply. I think that at that time about 50 per cent of heat was given to the city by CHPP-1. But at that time centralized heat supply was already actively developing. I remember that at that time the city was building main networks with a diameter of 500, 600, and 800 mm for 25 kilometers a year. And the responsibility of CHPP-1 to the city was very serious.

The heat supply of Alma-Ata was treated very carefully. We worked according to the 70/150º schedule. That is, 70º C is the minimum temperature; it is disinfected, because at this temperature germs do not live. Therefore, the water from the station goes both for batteries and for. We always worked with the heat networks, and they worked with Hydromet, from which we received a separate, more accurate weather forecast. And according to this forecast we started to raise the temperature. If frost was anticipated, we would raise the temperature of hot water for heating: at the outlet it was a maximum of 150º.

In the mid – 70s, there was a very severe wave of accidents in the Soviet Union, with power outages and loss of heat supply to big cities. Turbines were failing. That is why in our turbine shop we introduced the position of master – engineer for turbine regulation system. As statistics showed, all those accidents occurred due to malfunctions of the regulation system. And I asked to join the turbine shop, I wanted to find something interesting in my profession. Even then I thought that the turbine in the shop was … very beautiful. But in fact, the turbine shop is the basis of the CHPP. The whole economy of the station is located in the turbine shop: electricity and heat production takes place here. Eventually, I was transferred there.

In those years, we fought for every kilowatt to keep the load steady, we slept there 24 hours a day. I remember once a 150 mm pipe laying was broken, and the water ran like a fan. What could we do? If we shut off the water, the turbine would shut down. And the turbine is 25 MW of electric load, plus the loss of heat load. Then I.N. Shchetkin suggested that we replace it on the move. The idea was to depressurise the turbine a little, unbolt the valve (remove the bolts), water would run, but we would open the valve beforehand, put in a new one and have time to unbolt it. We did it this way: we pull out the gate valve – water is running, we insert a new one, put on one bolt… And then I was horrified to see that the holes do not coincide, although everything was done according to the state standard. In the end, we could insert three bolts…We close it, and the 25 MW plant sheds its load. But we were not reprimanded for this incident – we were climbing under the danger ourselves …

There was another story. Earlier around the station, and then, when they expanded the open switchgear (OSD), the Poganka River passed through it. And everything was normal until the time. And not far from the river there was a building of a booster pumping station. There were big pumps with engines. Next to them there were small pumps for oil supply to these big pumps. And that was the danger: if the booster pump house flooded, there would be no oil supply and the pump house would shut down anyway.

Then suddenly – it was spring – water started to come out. We didn’t understand where it was coming from. We started to look for the reason, and it turned out that when pile foundations were driven during the construction of the ORU, a pipe was broken. The pile blocked the cross-section of the pipe, and since there was a lot of rubbish on the Poganka River, the big pipe was blocked by branches. Water started to rise from the pipe and run in all directions, so we needed to clear the pipe to eliminate water logging, and this task is the responsibility of the turbine shop.

That’s when I suggested: “Let me climb from the side where there is not much water. You tie me with ropes so that I don’t get swept away, and I will slowly pull these branches apart”. Anyway, they tied me up…It was a little scary. The diameter of the pipe was about two meters, the ropes would have held, but it was hard to breathe…Still, slowly, branch by branch, I pulled them out, and soon the pump house stopped drowning.

KCHPP-1, as the only heat source of the capital of Kazakhstan, has always received very close attention from the management of both the city and the country, which gave us a serious sense of responsibility: we felt that we had the entire city watching us. Thus, a very difficult situation occurred in late February in the second half of the 1970s. The frost was somewhere around 30ºC , and in the turbine shop, you were unable to see the instruments at a distance of an arm’s length. Then the equipment started to break out. It was hard for the repairmen to work.

At that time, the Ministry of Energy was responsible for heat supply. Taking into account this situation we were given the task to start construction of two hot-water boilers – №7 and № 8. And they entrusted it to…turbine operators. I resisted as much as I could: “How is it possible, why turbine – boiler workers?” After all, turbine operators and boiler operators do different jobs. They use the biggest screw nuts, the heaviest tool – a sledgehammer, but at the same time the most accurate dimensions. We were not heard, but in the end we finally fulfilled this task well – we have delivered two hot-water boilers in 5 months.

There are a lot of memories connected with the cooling pond. I remember when we cleaned it, we built a raft and used it to paddle around the pond, and we even put a flag on it…Which was actually forbidden.

But at the same time, I would like to emphasize the very responsible attitude towards the power industry in the Soviet times, and the equipment, supply and maintenance was honest. If a major overhaul was carried out, it meant a complete restoration of the unit’s and equipment’s working capacity. For example, everything in a boiler was changed. The turbine was maintained according to the hours of operation and the number of starts and stops. This was very strictly monitored. Each turbine had its own passport, in which permanent records were kept.

At that time in Alma-Ata-Energo there was a correct system of repair, strict algorithms, as well as now – in AlES JSC. If maintenance is done correctly according to all documents, the equipment can work, conditionally speaking, for centuries. For example, it is time to change a high-pressure cylinder in a turbine. It should be ordered in advance, manufactured, timed and replaced, and it will continue to work for another 300-400 thousand hours. The foundation, metal structure, columns, etc. are also checked.

We usually started to consider major repairs two years before they were scheduled. We drew up a defect list – we measured metal thickness, number of failures, operating hours, etc. We predicted what we needed to change, submitted bids to the Ministry of Energy and defended each position. Purchases were combined with repair schedules, which we also planned in advance. I think that system was good, because the population did not feel the number of purchased pipes, turbines and other replacements.

“Alma-Ata-Energo worked normally during the repair processes. I also want to talk about the work of the Ministry of Energy and Electrification of the Kazakh SSR, which was headed by Timofey Ivanovich Baturov from November 1962 to 1980. We can safely say that much of the energy sector built and created in Alma-Ata and Kazakhstan is his merit. It happened that he was my father-in-law. But I, as a power engineer, never got any favors from him, of course”.

I will cite such a case. Once, on my father-in-law’s birthday, my wife and I came to congratulate him after the working day. But he opens the door and says: “What are you doing here, your station has gone down to zero”. He always knew what was going on in the republic’s energy industry. As there were no mobile phones at that time and I was on my way, I did not know about the emergency at the station. Therefore, I left for CHPP-1 without stepping inside.

Each person who works at the station has personal responsibility for his or her area. Especially managers and engineering staff. At that moment I was the deputy shop manager of the station. I was stuck there for two days since I left.

And there were a lot of people like my father-in-law in our system. Timofey Ivanovich and Dinmukhamed Akhmedovich Kunayev were almost the same age. They had worked together in East Kazakhstan, Timofey Ivanovich was the chief power engineer of lead-zinc and non-ferrous metal industry. He started, as all power engineers used to do, with the first working step of being a machine operator. He was convinced that even if you graduated from Harvard, you should start working at the bottom. It was your challenge to make it to the top or to fail.

In the 70-80s, the industry ministry placed an order for maintenance work. There were 12 people in the Department of Perspective Development of the Ministry of Energy, and they had a good handle on it. They planned all over Kazakhstan, when and what power plant to put and in what location, etc. Then everything was submitted to the decision of the government. However, they did not do without travelling to factories to remind suppliers of their needs. In spite of strict planning, we still had to get a lot of things.

I managed to have one case. When I was about to depart on a business trip to work in Iraq, we had a turbine breakdown at CHPP-1. According to the forms, the required spare part was not supposed to be there, it was a speed regulator in the turbine, weighing 10 kg, but it was nowhere to be found. And I was sent on a business trip to the Leningrad Metal Works, where they were working on a turbine designed for Pakistan. The system was as follows: the turbine was assembled, cranked, then disassembled and sent abroad. But it was not going to be assembled very soon. It was very difficult for me to persuade them, but taking into account the time before the turbine was sent, I managed to get a speed regulator for our turbine. This speaks about absolutely different morality at that time, about reciprocity and flexibility. They told me at the plant that they would be proud of the fact that they had helped Alma-Ata.

And later I flew to Iraq. After three years of work in that country, I returned to the station again, to work in the same position from which I had left. Soon I was summoned to Almaty-Energo, to the District Party Committee and was told that I had to go to the CHPP-2 as chief engineer, which was commissioned in 1980. The station was very difficult, not similar in layout to other CHPPs, plus it was deepened due to high seismicity and reclaimed soil. In order to fix it, we dug a 12-metre deep pit and built a foundation, which caused operational problems. You don’t want to, but you have to do it because there was one pattern at the District Committee, if you do anything wrong “put your party ticket on the table and leave” …

At that time there was no established personnel at CHPP-2 yet. Because it was forbidden to accept people from other stations of the city, so they started recruiting from all over the former Soviet Union. There were also operational problems – for example, removal of ash, with which everything was clogged. Any pipe would burst and there would be a “flood”. There were many failures in operation; either a boiler or a turbine would shut down. And the underground itself seemed terrible to me – it was a consequence of the deepening of the station.

At that time, in addition to the operation of CHPP-2, there were also the tasks of station development. At that time a part of it was working and a part was still under construction. We had to build and commission the 5th and 6th turbines, which was the first 110 MW turbines in the power system. And the 4th turbine was a back-pressure turbine. In total there were eight boilers and 6 turbines at CHPP-2. The boilers are 420 tons, i.e. one and a half boilers work for one turbine. Every year a boiler-turbine was commissioned at that time.

It was hard for everyone at that time, and I believe that each generation of managers made its own efforts to improve the work of the plant and now it has become very reliable and clean. For example, at that time the Research Institute of Power Engineering made an ash collector for us, it captured 99.8% of ash, solid particles. We started to install the ash collector in the 1st boiler, but the vortex pipes were quickly failing, we needed a special material. We ordered more robust pipes from a military plant. Then Ukrainians offered plastic ones. They had a well-known plant in the Soviet times in Dnepropetrovsk. It produced strategic missiles, the most famous of which was the SS-18 Satana.

We were not allowed to access this plant for a very long time: outside there was a high stone fence, and inside there was barbed wire and sentries walking around like a border. They made them for us even before the early 90s. As a result, the visible ash emissions at the 1st boiler decreased sharply, including very dangerous ones – cadmium, heavy metals.

There was also a very significant incident. On the closing day of the last XVI Congress of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan on 8 February 1986, “Alma-Ata-Energo” – the whole system went to zero. When the light went out at home, I got a bit anxious, had 15-20 minutes to wait, then got into the car and drove – the city was in complete darkness. I entered the station, and there was steam hissing, I couldn’t see anything, and there were no torches. Then when I got a little more settled in, I looked at the feed pump and saw that it was gone. The reason was in the network: a short circuit at the 24th substation in Gorkiy Park. The automation system was still operating at the station, but the employee hesitated for about 5 seconds whether or not to switch off the equipment. And these 5 seconds of hesitation were enough for the station to go down to zero and drag everything else down with it.

It took a long time to be restored. We started up together with the entire power system, and first we had to restore the lines. It took about three days to get power from other systems. Electricity came from other energy systems of the republic. One of the main principles of the system that united all power grids of Kazakhstan and Central Asian countries worked here. This allowed us to take power from our neighbors if our situation was bad.

If an emergency was severe, many or all of them could go down to zero. But, at that moment, the main problem for us was that not only electricity, but also heat was lost, and you can’t take it from your neighbor. Since there was no electricity anywhere, all the heat was cut off, because electricity is used to power the pumps that supply cold and hot water.

… And then there came 1992 with all the known problems. Not only were there no links between the supplies companies in different republics, but co-operation had almost completely ended. In the same year I was appointed chief engineer of Almaty-Energo. At the same time, the position of chief engineer of the energy system was a nomenclature of the Ministry of Energy. They approved it so that the chief engineer would not be dependent on the director of the energy system. And in order for the chief engineer not to say what the director says. After all, very often the director had completely different thoughts than the chief engineer.

The system of fan switch-off started with the Almaty power industry. This happened in 1993-94, when they stopped supplying us with gas. But each transformer was designed to consume a certain power, and they started to burn. At the same time, we had no fuses on the transformers according to the scheme – even in the calculations, in the projects, it was not there. Therefore, we decided to disconnect consumers from light in entire districts so that at least some power would be available in one district, then – in the second district, etc. This was a necessary measure so that all our equipment would not fail.

The Belgians came to the energy complex of Almaty in August 1996. Under a sale and purchase agreement with the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Tractebel S. A.” acquired the Almaty power complex and established the Almaty Power Consolidated CJSC – APC on its basis. I remember, we held a meeting where all directors of enterprises, including Taldykorgan, were present. Suddenly, a whole crowd of people came in and we were introduced to them: “These are Belgians, they have now formalized the purchase”. And we are sitting and reasoning how we can survive, and everything revolves around fuel, which we do not have. I would like to remind you that it was at that time that coal miners and oilmen took a tough stance on the price. Prices were unreasonably high. And the energy sector could not raise tariffs.

To be honest, that period was the most difficult in my memory. A lot of people were against the fact that we were acquired by the Belgians. Which is quite justified: the first thing they did was to sack many employees, including the director of the energy system. But it is absolutely certain that without the Belgians we would not have survived in that situation. Before the beginning of that heating season at CHPP-1 and CHPP-2 there was a 10-day coal reserve, which was unacceptable, because according to all the norms we should have a 40-day fuel reserve. That is, there was neither fuel nor money. There were big arrears of wages, which the Belgians paid at once. They lay off a large number of workers, but all of them were paid in accordance with the law. After they had settled old debts with everyone, the Belgians paid for their work in time, irrespective of the collection of money for the output. And in the beginning they paid with their own funds.

There were a lot of technical workers from Europe who came to the power system during their initial period. True, they quickly realized that they had nothing to do here at Tractebel, because we were the only ones who knew our equipment. But in general, they saved not only the stations, but the whole city at that time. My first task as the head of the agro-industrial complex at that time was to develop regulations. The goal was to introduce a simple rule into the law as a norm: electricity and heat are commodities that must be paid for on a regular basis. It was not easy to accustom consumers to this idea, as electricity was not considered a commodity in Soviet times, and even after the Soviet era. And the Belgians helped a lot in developing this habit in Almaty citizens.

And they also had a very interesting peculiarity: when there were a lot of them, they wrote a CV for each of us. Based on this dossier to some extent, they made personnel appointments. So they appointed me general director. It was another ordeal when they started dragging me through the courts. Some days I would have, like, three trials in a row. And I then said to the owners, “Come on, let's make the switch again, you only need a general director for the courts, and in court, foreigners were treated differently.” Then I stopped going to these courts …

Analyzing their period, I would like to note that the first thing they did was to put the finances and economy of the complex in order, putting it at the top of the agenda. The AIC and then the AlES would not have been so successful in economy and organization of production and financial activities if the Belgians had not been there. They fully digitalized the AIC economy – finance, accounting. Their company did not have process dispatching like ours. But when the technicians told them, they realized that dispatching was important, and they did a lot with computers and communication lines.

The Belgians were also able to solve pricing issues with coal miners. The AIC signed an agreement with fuel suppliers, where the price of fuel took into account the calorific value of coal. In order to determine it, they purchased special equipment. They put it at all stations – samplers, calorie machines. All the equipment was rather complicated and expensive. But from that moment on, when unloading wagons, a sample was taken from each batch and the calorific value of fuel was measured.

Moreover, the coal miners, even though they were capitalists from the beginning, believed our data, because they did not have such equipment. And they paid according to our data, observing the grade rule. The price was not constant, for example, 1000 per ton. This approach allowed getting quality coal, because the price depends on the grade. Lower quality means less income. And hence the improvement of ecology, which the quality of coal also affects almost directly.

Under the Belgians, we first started to disconnect consumers for non-payment. When there was “Almaty-Energo”, we were afraid to do it, as the akimat, deputy ministers and ministers, officials of all levels started calling immediately.

At the initial stage, the AIC had a lot of technical problems. Moreover, extremely serious ones. For example, the 9th turbine at CHPP-1 was out of order. It was very important for us to repair it in time. There was a serious accident. It needed more than a major overhaul; we had to change the entire winding. With the help of the Belgians, we bought the winding in Ekaterinburg. Not only had that, Sasha Romanov, who was the owner of Rotor at the time, bought branded overalls for the workers.

I remember when they repaired a turbine, they had to put up guards and police because they were stealing. And we had no money for station security at that time. And at “Alma-Ata-Energo” in the Soviet period we did not even think that someone would get in and blow up the turbine. Now all the stations are surrounded by fences, barbed wire, I think it is right and safe. Such facilities should be reliably guarded. After the January events this became especially obvious, and the system of protection of strategic facilities changed.

In May 2000 the company “Tractebel S. A.” left Kazakhstan energy market, after that APK CJSC was taken over by KazTransGas JSC. Three years later CJSC was re-registered into JSC, and in June 2006 Almaty Electric Stations JSC was established.

… I think it is legitimate: every period sets its own tasks and requires constant improvements, modernizations and solutions. Ultimately, this benefits the consumers, because the system, having preserved its professional traditions, is improving, becoming more reliable, more secure, and more environmentally friendly …