Most of Tajikistan was hit by a blackout on October 28, following an unexpected outage at the republic’s largest power producer, the Nurek hydroelectric power plant.
According to press reports, the blackout affected the capital city Dushanbe and all other areas of the country except for the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region, which receives electricity from a different supplier. The power outage lasted from 18:30 local time to about 21.30 the same evening.
The cause of the outage is not known for sure although Russian news agency Sputnik speculated that it might have resulted from problems with the LEP-500 transmission line, which supplies power to most regions of Tajikistan. On October 31, the national power provider Barq-i Tojik said it had established a special commission to investigate the incident and to determine the reasons for the blackouts. The investigation is likely to take about two weeks.
Power shortages are relatively common in Tajikistan but this one was unusual because it nearly led to the shutdown of one of the country’s most important industrial facilities – the smelter operated by Tajik Aluminium Co. in Tursunzoda.
On October 28 Barq-i Tojik had tried and failed once to restore electricity deliveries to the smelter. Power supply was eventually resumed at about 23.30 hours.
