The Chennai metro takes the planned urbanisation agenda a step forward with the opening of the 9-km-long extension. The new line will allow passengers to travel from the northern part of the city to Chennai International Airport in the south in around one hour and will play a key role in easing the road traffic and enhancing public transportation.

ABB solutions are part of this fourth largest metro system in India with the supply of ACH580 and ACS880 active front end drives to support the metro line’s ventilation system and platform cooling. These drives are a part of ABB’s HVAC offering designed to meet high levels of safety, reliability and energy efficiency requirements.

ABB drives are used together with electric motors for the effective control of tunnel ventilation fans. They are integral in the operation of advanced air exchange systems in the stations and tunnels, ensuring passengers’ comfort and saving energy in normal operation as well as contributing to safe evacuation, smoke extract and fire fighting in case of emergency.

The voltage boost feature of ABB’s HVAC drives addresses voltage-drop issues caused by long cables in the tunnel network. With this feature, fans are always able to provide a nominal airflow without a need for any external equipment to compensate for voltage drop. This brings enormous cost benefits to the project. It’s almost non-existent harmonics, mitigate the risk of the network overload, ensuring continuous ventilation and efficient power supply.

The “fireman’s override” feature allows VSDs on smoke extraction and pressurisation fans to maintain safe escape routes for the passengers, ignoring non-critical faults and warnings e.g. due to too high temperature. In the event of a fire, this mode is usually triggered with a special key at the fireman’s control station.

ABB India has partnered with Sterling Wilson, one of the leading EPC companies, to provide HVAC solutions for the Chennai metro project.

Written from a company news release.