KEGOC ascertains cause of blackout in Central Asia

The cause of the power grid blackout in Kazakhstan was a short circuit at the Syrdarya Power Plant in Uzbekistan, KEGOC Company stated. According to it, six power units were switched off due to the outage. The generation loss exceeded 1,500 MW.

“The power shortage that occurred in the energy system of Uzbekistan led to unauthorized power take-off from the national grid of Kazakhstan, connected to parallel operation with the power systems of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. As a result, a power surge hit the 500 kV transit ‘North-East-South of Kazakhstan’ with its subsequent overload,” the company explained.

The large-scale blackout occurred on January 25, affecting Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Residents of Almaty city and southern regions of the country were left without power. Meanwhile, there was no electricity in neighboring states at all.

Translation by Saniya Sakenova

Editing by Galiya Khassenkhanova