This is a line of voltage class 1150 kV, which was built about 35 years ago in Kazakhstan. It was a unique project for the whole world to transfer electric power of several thousand megawatts from the Ekibastuz coal basin (Kazakhstan) to the center of the USSR. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the transmission of such power was not in demand, and the line was switched to a voltage class of 500 kV. Unfortunately, this led to certain difficulties for the line and the grid.

For example, such a line with 8 wires in phase has an increased linear capacity compared to conventional 500 kV lines with only 3 wires in phase. Therefore, compensation of the reactive charging power of such a line with the help of shunt reactors turned out to be a non-trivial task. There were also problems with 500 kV switches, because switching lines with reactors connected to it under some conditions was equivalent to switching off direct current (with no zero-level crossings), and the switches were damaged, including by leading World manufacturers.

After that story I clearly understood that there are no absolutely successful leaders with an impeccable reputation in the World energy sector, and even leading companies sometimes do not fully understand what they produce and how to calculate it correctly.

After the accidents, I could reason like this: if even the World’s leading companies do not always know how to correctly calculate processes, then I definitely have nothing to do here. However, being an optimist, I reasoned otherwise – there are still so many interesting things in World energy sector that need to be improved, and I began to improve it. Therefore, I have already written 6 books in the field of electric power and continue this work.