There was a large-scale power outage in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It led, among other things, to the shutdown of water supply and the cessation of banking operations in Bishkek, the shutdown of one oil refinery and three gas processing plants by Uzbekneftegaz. Traffic lights went out in Bishkek, the subway stopped working in Tashkent, and the power went out in several districts of Almaty.
Photo: Igor Kovalenko/EPA
In addition, the international airport in Tashkent has stopped receiving flights.
And in Uzbekistan, people are stuck on a cable car in the Amirsoy ski resort.
Kazakhstan stated that the failure occurred due to an overload of the transit line, and blamed the power engineers of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for the incident.
“On January 25, 2022 at 11:59 a.m. (Nur-Sultan time), due to a significant emergency imbalance created by the energy system of Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan), there was a power surge for the transit of 500 kV electricity «North-East-South of Kazakhstan»» , — the press service of the Kazakh operator for the management of electric networks KEGOC says in a statement.
The volume of restrictions, according to KEGOC, amounted to about 1500 megawatts.
In Kyrgyzstan, they are sure that the accident did not occur on their territory. Akylbek Zhaparov, head of the Kyrgyz Cabinet of Ministers, said that a special commission would determine the exact cause of the failure.
“As if this did not happen on our territory, we can say it for sure, show it and prove it to our neighbors. Where exactly this happened and for what reason, I think, this will be determined by the commission, which will be created at the request of the governments of the three countries, so that we will not allow this to happen again,” he said, noting that the Kyrgyz power engineers showed professionalism and did not allow the exit technical equipment was out of order, so all the country's strategic facilities continued to operate normally.
The Ministry of Energy of Uzbekistan reported that the accident led to the automatic shutdown of the Tashkent and Syrdarya thermal power plants (TPP), as they are connected to the Unified Electric Grid of Central Asia. This also led to the shutdown of the Talimarjan and Turakurgan TPPs.
“As a result, electricity was cut off in the Fergana and Tashkent regions, the Ferghana Valley, Syrdarya, Jizzakh, Samarkand, Bukhara, Kashkadarya regions,” the department said.
Later, the ministry announced the gradual restoration of electricity supply to the regions of Uzbekistan. On behalf of the President of the country, a Government Commission was established under the leadership of the Prime Minister to investigate the causes of the incident and develop a plan to prevent such situations.
- Electricity exports from Russia to Kazakhstan resumed by 10:40 Moscow time.
- By 16:30, the work of the airport of the capital of Uzbekistan resumed. In addition, power supply has been restored at the airports of Andijan, Samarkand, Nukus and Urgench. Partially electricity was supplied to the Fergana airport, Uzbekistan Airports told TASS.
- By 17:00, Kazakhstan announced the restoration of the energy system. The press service of the government of the republic also noted that Uzbekistan is being assisted in eliminating the consequences of the accident.
An accident of this magnitude is happening for the first time in the history of the unified energy system of Central Asia, Kyrgyz Energy Minister Doskul Bekmurzaev said during a press conference (Radio Azattyk, a branch of Radio Liberty, which is included by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation in the list of media performing the function of a «foreign agent» ).
The United Energy System of Central Asia was formed during the Soviet era. In 2009, it broke up, and it was restored only after 10 years. However, there was talk about this back in 2014 — there was a shortage of electricity in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Peter Svoik
The energy system of Kazakhstan consists of two insufficiently connected parts — north and south. The North is actually a continuation of the Russian energy system, part of the Russian energy bridge. Although, of course, it also has an independent significance for the whole of Kazakhstan. And the south is part of the Central Asian ring. Moreover, the Central Asian ring is combined.
If you look at the disposition of the substation of this base ring, then it turns out like this: Kyrgyzstan, then Kazakhstan, then Uzbekistan, then again Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The Tajik ring is also connected to this Uzbek ring. These are all looped networks. What happened: somewhere in the south, not in Kazakhstan … Apparently, in Uzbekistan, there was a sharp drop in generation — something flew out there, a capacity of about one and a half thousand megawatts. And these one and a half thousand megawatts formed an additional burden on communications in Kazakhstan between north and south.
That is, the south lost 1.5 thousand megawatts, therefore, they had to be received from the north. And the capacity of the lines from north to south is less than this need. As a result, as the power engineers say, there was a surge of capacity on this line to compensate, and the automation worked to disconnect the north from the south, or the south from the north.
Automation, one might say, worked «for five»: it did not allow serious damage, but simply disconnected one system from another. And more importantly, the automation at the power plant worked very well.
In general, in such major accidents there is always a risk that the stations will not only go to zero, but will also go to zero with big trouble. The generators may catch fire or the transformer. Here everything worked out in the most favorable way. Not a single station went to zero, the network simply collapsed, and it was promptly restored. But they were frightened, especially by professionals, very much, because the very systemic separation of the north and south, as well as the coverage of several large cities by an accident at once, is very serious.
Svoik noted that the Central Asian energy ring was optimally built in terms of configuration, however, when it was built, no one knew that all this “was sovereignized and the same ring would be on the territory of four countries” — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan .
“And electricity is one and the same system, very well looped. And if something falls out somewhere, the system reacts to it as a whole,” added Svoik.
Where exactly the failure occurred, according to him, will soon become clear, but now there is reason to believe that it did not happen in Kazakhstan.
“One and a half thousand megawatts cannot be lost just like that. These are serious capacities,”
Svoik emphasized.
He also explained that mining, which is being talked about as a possible cause of the failure in Kazakhstan, has nothing to do with it. “Mining really creates an overload in the system, and this is a big problem. But in this case, the system collapsed due to the instantaneous loss of a very large generation,” the expert said.