Uzbekistan forms govt commission to deal with causes of latest blackout

TASHKENT. Jan 25 (Interfax) - A governmental commission chaired by the prime minister has been formed in line with the Uzbek president's order to identify and deal with the reasons behind Tuesday's blackout in several Central Asian countries, the Uzbek Energy Ministry said on Tuesday.

"The commission set the task, above all, to resume the power generation process and to restore electricity supply to consumers by energizing high voltage and low voltage power lines," the Energy Ministry said.

The governmental commission has set a number of objectives to the industry, such as to establish the cause of the latest power outage, to prevent its repeat, to work out measures to ensure stable power supply and to immediately put these measures into practice, it said.

The Uzbek power grid, which is connected to Central Asia's unified power grid, has a system of protection from accidents at the Tashkent and Syrdarya thermal power plants, and this system automatically disconnected both power plants from the grid. This, in turn, negatively affected the operations of major facilities such as the Talimarjan and Turakurgan thermal power plants, plunging most of the country into darkness.

A stage-by-stage process to restore electricity supply is continuing, the ministry said.

Major power outages occurred in several Uzbek regions at 11:00 a.m. on January 25. Electricity supply problems were also reported in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The blackout has been tentatively blamed on an accident in Central Asia's unified power grid.

The unified power grid of Central Asia comprises Uzbekistan, the south of Kazakhstan, as well as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

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