Power supply for railways in Eastern Russia discussed by RZD and Russia’s Minister of Energy

Credit: Russian Railways (RZD)

The Minister of Energy for the Russian Federation, Nikolai Shulginov, and the Managing Director and Chairman of the Board of Russian Railways (RZD), Oleg Belozerov, have held a working meeting at which they discussed the power supply for the second stage of development for the Eastern region of Russian Railways.

“Taking into account the tasks that were set in the Decree issued by the President of the Russian Federation regarding the development of the railways in Eastern Russia, it will be necessary to practically double the consumption of electric power in order to increase the throughput capacity of the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian Main Lines to meet future traffic volumes. It is necessary to work out a coordinated approach to the development of the power grid economy in Siberia and Russia’s Far East region,” said Oleg Belozerov, Managing Director and Chairman of the Board of RZD.

“At present, all of the main technical solutions for the external power supply of traction substations have been developed and pre-design work has begun on the corresponding facilities. The implementation of the main measures for the development of the trunk network (220kV and 500kV) will require the construction of about 2,144 km of power transmission lines and 1,670MVA of transformer capacity,” said Nikolai Shulginov.