Completion of Technical Code and Ancillary documentation for CASA 1000 project

Since the construction start date of the CASA-1000 Power Transmission Project, substantial implementation and construction activities have been undertaken so that CASA-1000 facilities can be available for commissioning and start-up by the project’s commercial operations date. Key components of the CASA-1000 project are the High Voltage Direct Current Facilities that include sophisticated HVDC Converter Stations in Tajikistan and Pakistan, linked by a power transmission line that will also cross Afghanistan. In parallel with the construction of this system, CASA-1000 countries need to develop and then implement the DC Operating Strategy by which the HVDC Facilities will be operated as a unit under the control of a single operating organization, the Direct Current Operator, and integrated with AC Facilities of CASA-1000 Transmission Systems and national grids of CASA-1000 countries.

In this context, CESI was asked to develop the HVDC Technical Code for the CASA-1000 countries. Its tasks included:

• Facilitation and finalization of the CASA-1000 HVDC Technical Code
• Resolution of misalignments and gaps between the HVDC Technical Code and the CASA HVDC country technical codes and other relevant documents and regulations
• Support during the development of all required ancillary documents to ensure the provisions of the Technical Code can be fully implemented, including each document’s initial drafts, identification of critical decisions and the specific parties that will need to make those decisions, viable options that should be considered and relevant interrelationships among the ancillary documents, the Technical Code and other relevant country documents.

The assignment took place over the course of 12 months and involved 30 experts and EnerNex, a CESI company (https://www.enernex.com/).

Under this complex project, CESI is also:

• providing owner’s engineer services related to the construction of the two HVDC converter stations and the ±500kV HVDC transmission line between them (https://www.cesi.it/projects/full-owners-engineering-for-casa-1000-project/)
• helping the CASA-1000 Secretariat to identify the best way to operate the Interconnector (https://www.cesi.it/projects/operating-strategy-for-casa-1000-project/)