THE POWER OF HEAT

New residential areas, social amenities and major industrial enterprises are opening in the Azerbaijani capital almost every month. As the number of such facilities increases so do Baku's requirements and demands, which include, first and foremost, uninterrupted supplies of electricity. And since a large section of the population continues to use electric heaters as their main source of heating during the cold winter months, it is clear that the capital's power engineers have to work virtually round-the-clock to ensure the economy is up and running. To keep its promise to consumers about stable electricity supplies whatever the season and whatever the weather, the Bakielektriksabaka open joint-stock company began preparing for the coming autumn-winter season back in the spring. Today, the bulk of this work has been completed.

"Prepare in good time…"

President Ilham Aliyev has pointed out more than once in his speeches the need to take serious action to ensure that Baku's electrical distribution network functions normally as the number of its residential and industrial facilities increases. This was taken into account in the preparation of the state programme for the integrated development of the network and for ensuring its conformity with international requirements.

As part of this programme Bakielektriksabaka is carrying out routine maintenance on a wide scale to ensure that electricity customers receive uninterrupted supplies, and the high standard of servicing is maintained during the autumn-winter season.

First and foremost, as has already been pointed out, power engineers are having to increase the network's capacity because obsolete equipment is being updated, new substations and transmission lines are being built, and so on.

Bakielektriksabaka's technical director, Sadiq Sadiqov, says that an outline of general maintenance intervals has been worked out based on a general plan. "The purpose of this is to check the technical state of electrical equipment and to eradicate any flaws, repair defective equipment and bring it into full working order and create a supply of spare parts and equipment. Moreover, in order to avoid possible accidents we must overhaul contact joints and transformer cooling circuits and carry out fire-fighting measures," he noted.

Work on preparing the energy distribution network for the autumn-winter season is nearing completion, and when the cold weather arrives people in the capital and part of the Abseron Peninsula will have no problems with their electricity supplies, the power engineers say. However, as in previous years, they are hoping that customers will show responsibility and use their electricity rationally to avoid overloading the network.

Daily reforms

Preparing for the cold weather is only a part of the day's work for the power engineers. In order to implement the state programme for the development of Azerbaijan's fuel-and-power industry (2005-2015), which was endorsed by President Ilham Aliyev, an investment programme for Bakielektriksabaka has been prepared which includes a whole raft of measures to improve the city's power supplies.

As Sadiqov pointed out, since Bakielektriksabaka resumed operations in 2006, 14 new 110 kW substations, 29 35 kW substations and 128 transformer stations have been built as well as 2,000 km of power lines laid. In short, work on five 110 kW and 16 35 kW substations is currently being completed. As a result of all this work, the reception and distribution capacity of the Baku network has increased by 70% compared with 2006.

Furthermore, in recent years the number of lengthy breakdowns in power supplies, which were frequent before the capital's electricity network was entrusted to Bakielektriksabaka, has been reduced to a minimum. This has been achieved thanks to maintenance work in the network, and more specifically, to the construction of 0.4 kW networks with insulation wiring, to the metering of electricity consumption using state-of-the-art technology, the adoption of the SCADA remote-control system in new substations, as well as safety relay and automated systems. In the past few years the volume of technical losses has been reduced by 6 per cent (to 10 per cent), and instances of excessive overloading of the network have been eradicated. And this is not the end of the story - work on this investment programme is still going on.

At Bakielektriksabaka they are well aware that the basis of the success of all these reforms is the human factor, and that is why the company is focusing particular attention on improving working conditions for staff and new administrative buildings, depots for storing spare parts and buildings for testing and repairing electronic meters equipped with state-of-the-art technology, and so on, are being built.

However, as Baku develops, its power engineers will need to reform and improve. The main thing is to accomplish what they set out to do, and then the famed fires of Baku will never be extinguished…