Power returns to Central Asia after large-scale blackout

Power has gradually been restored across three ex-Soviet countries Central Asian countries after one of the biggest blackouts in the grid-sharing region's history.

Electricity was restored across Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday after an accident triggered a massive power outage there and in neighbours Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the country's energy ministry said.

"Electricity supplies have been restored all over Kyrgyzstan after a large-scale power failure," a ministry spokeswoman, Jiyde Zootbekova, told AFP News Agency.

Uzbekistan's energy ministry said that "the supply of electricity to the regions of the country is now gradually being restored."

An AFP correspondent said that electricity had returned to his apartment in central Tashkent at around 1130 GMT.

Another correspondent in Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty said electricity had returned to the economic hub, although it was not immediately clear if other cities in the vast country's southern regions had received power again.

Kazakhstan's capital Nur-Sultan, part of a different grid, was not affected by the outage.

Massive power cuts

All three capitals suffered power cuts at around lunchtime local time, with media and officials reporting that the blackouts had extended far into the provinces of the three countries.

Earlier, Uzbekistan's energy ministry said in a statement on its official Telegram channel that the power outage had been triggered by an accident in Kazakhstsan's power grid.

"As a result of a major accident in the power grids of the Republic of Kazakhstan, there was a power outage in the (southern Kazakh) cities of Almaty, Shymkent, Taras, Turkestan (regions) and adjacent areas," the statement said.

"The Uzbek power grid, which is connected to the Unified Power Grid, was damaged as a result of an accident that led to sudden changes in voltage and frequency on 530 lines from Kazakhstan," it added.

A spokesman for Kyrgyzstan's energy ministry told AFP by telephone that power had failed "due to an accident in the regional energy grid".

Central Asian countries have seen their grids burdened by a summer drought that affected hydropower capacity in Kyrgyzstan and by a boom in cryptocurrency mining in the region, especially in Kazakhstan.

The growth of cryptocurrency mining in Kazakhstan was linked in part to a de facto ban on the practise in next-door China, and a spike in prices for volatile cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin in the second half of last year.

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