Who staged a blackout in Central Asia

Sergey Kondratiev, Deputy Head of the Economic Department of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Vzglyad.ru about the blackout in Central Asia.

In Kazakhstan, power engineers from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan were named guilty of the blackout. “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,” KEGOC press service said. As a result, an emergency separation of the transit "North-East-South of Kazakhstan" took place. The accident led to a massive power outage in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, united in a single energy ring.

Sergey Kondratiev, Deputy Head of the Economic Department of the Institute for Energy and Finance, believes that the reason voiced by Kazakhstan looks plausible.

Such interconnected energy systems are a common story. The unified energy system exists in the same EU, the BRELL energy ring has been preserved since Soviet times, where electricity flows between Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, etc. “However, in these systems there are no accidents affecting several countries at once. Because these interconnected energy systems have better planning, more spare capacity and better network structure,” Kondratiev says. In addition, the energy systems of the three Central Asian countries, although they have been united, do not have a single control center. And this disadvantage also played a role.