Almaty is the "southern capital" of Kazakhstan and the largest city, where demand for transport services is growing each year. Metro construction started in the late 80s with the purpose of transport infrastructure improvement, passenger traffic volume growth, and city environment improvement. However, financing of this project resumed only in 2005, and from that point on starts a new milestone in the metro history. On December 1, 2011, the first metro section with a total length of 8.6 km was put into operation. The first line first section project included an electrical depot, engineering building, operational personnel building, and 7 stations. Today, the Almaty metro, according to experts, is the most up-to-date metro in the territory of CIS.
On April 18, 2015, the first start-up segment of the metro first line second section, which included 2 stations, was put into operation. 9 substations are in operation for today. PLUTON is the General contractor for the supply, installation, and commissioning of all traction and step-down substations of the First Line of Almaty metro. PLUTON supplied 7 combined traction and step-down substations and 4 step-down substations. PLUTON equipment installed on substations meets international standards and provides power supply reliability, safety, and maintainability. Built-in modern control systems provide substations parameters monitoring, diagnostics, protection, recording of all transient processes as well as control algorithms analysis and implementation.
New substations are intended to provide an uninterrupted power supply for the Almaty metro. The applied modern equipment is meant to significantly reduce operational costs.
In 2021, PLUTON experts carried out a comprehensive turn-key project on the supply of combined traction and step-down substations for the newly built “Saryarka” and “Bauyrzhan Momyshuly” stations, that currently provide reliable and failure-free power supply for the new metro section. PLUTON equipment, installed in these substations, meets the international standards and provides safe and easy maintenance:
- NEX switchgears 10 kV - 2 sets,
- DC switchgears 825 V - 24 units;
- transformer - 16 units;
- RESIBLOC® transformer - 6 units;
- rectifier - 6 units;
- AC switchgear 0.23...0.4 kV - 4 sets;
- communications based train control switchgear - 2 units;
- equipment for tunnels and depots:
- line disconnector cabinet - 23 units;
- cables connection cabinet - 17 units;
- uninterruptible power supply static system - 4 units;
- uninterrupted power supply system - 2 units;
- reactive power compensation installation - 8 units;
- telecontrol equipment - 2 sets.
On May 30, 2022, the opening of “Saryarka” and “Bauyrzhan Momyshuly”, took place. The new stations will allow increasing passenger traffic by almost twice — to 85 thousand people every day, and provide Almaty residents with more comfortable and quicker transportation to both sides.