In the National Grid of Kazakhstan, an extremely tense situation remains associated with accidents at power plants.

On the one hand, this problem is related to the depreciation of generating equipment. Thus, the age of more than 55% of the generating equipment of thermal power plants is more than 30 years, for hydroelectric power plants this indicator is more than 66%.

As of the end of November 2021, the operating life of the park resource is over 100%, for boilers is 26%, for steam turbines — 44%, for gas turbine-s 3%, and for hydraulic units — 50%. The volume of emergency repairs in the system is growing fr om year to year. Due to shortage of electricity and power, the equipment is practically working to the maximum.

The number of main generating equipment with more than 30 years of service is 55% for TPP and 66% for HPP.

Thus, on January 18, power unit No. 2 at Ekibastuz GRES-2 was shut down in an emergency.

At the same time, according to the System Operator, emergency repairs continued at the same time at power unit No. 1 at Ekibastuz GRES-2 and power unit No. 5 at Ekibastuz GRES-1. On the same day, power unit No. 2 at Ekibastuz GRES-1 was shut down in an emergency.

Already on January 19, K-4 A building at power unit No. 4 of the Eurasian Energy Corporation (EEC) was also shut down in an emergency. In those days, KEGOC JSC reported that the current situation could lead to unacceptable power deviations at the border with the Russian energy system, with overload of interstate power transmission lines and the threat of a system accident.

The situation occurred in the second decade of January in the National Grid of the Republic of Kazakhstan seems to have been already occurred in the system October-November 2021. Here we must pay tribute to the professionalism of the dispatch center for operational work of the team. However, just a week later, on January 25, a blackout occurred caused by an accident in the power system of Uzbekistan, wh ere 6 power units at the Syrdarya thermal power plant were disconnected due t a short circuit, with a total loss of generation of more than 1500 MW. The resulting shortage of power in the power system of Uzbekistan led to an unauthorized extraction of power from the power system Kazakhstan, connected to parallel operation with the power systems of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. As a result, there was a “surge” of power for the 500 kV transit “North-East-South of Kazakhstan” with its subsequent overload.

In order to prevent damage to the power equipment and complete blackout of the southern regions of the country, the automatic operation divided the transit with the transfer of Almaty, Zhambyl, Turkestan and Kyzylorda regions to isolated work.

Thanks to the correct and timely operation of emergency automations of KEGOC JSC, all power plants in the southern regions remained in operation, continuing to supply electricity and heat to consumers with a total capacity of about 1,500 MW. Thus, the complete blackout of consumers of the southern zone of Kazakhstan was prevented.

Due to the lack of transmission of capacity on transit 500 kV "North — East — South of Kazakhstan", forced restrictions amounted to about 1,800 MW.

At the same time, the complete blackout occurred in power systems Of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan with the shutdown of all power plants and consumers In the power system of Uzbekistan, the disconnected load was about 9,600 MW (100% of consumption), in Kyrgyzstan about 2,600 MW (100% of consumption).

On the same day, at 15:50 (Nur Sultan time), restrictions on electricity supply to consumers in Almaty city, Almaty, Turkestan, Kyzylorda and Zhambyl regions were completely lifted except for Kazphosphate LLP and TMP LLP. At 20:41 p.m. all restrictions on the southern zone, including the Zhambyl region, were completely lifted. The normal operation of National Grid of Kazakhstan was restored.

 Currently, the National Grid of the Republic of Kazakhstan operates in parallel in the power pool system of the CIS countries and other countries connected by intersystem power transmission lines and united by a single technological regime. This gives enormous economic benefits for each country. Parallel operation allows selling or buying excess electricity in neighboring countries, which brings economic benefits to all systems

Parallel operation of adjacent power systems allows reducing the cost of construction and maintenance of network infrastructure, generation reserves due to the fact that parallel operating power systems partially cover their needs for electricity transmission, reserve generating capacity at the expense of neighbors.

At the same time, it should be noted that due to current situation in the electric power industry, our country has to overpay for expensive Russian electricity. Thus in 2021, the volume of electricity imports from the Russian Federation amounted to 1,812,603.7 thousand kWh, and exports to the Russian Federation - 1,326,596.2 thousand kWh, and in monetary terms, the volume of electricity imports from Russia amounted to 86.2 million US dollars, and exports - 20.1 million US dollars. This means that the balance of export-import of electricity in 2021with Russia amounted to 66.1 million Us dollars.

Within the framework of the current geopolitical situation in the region, this dependence once again raises the issue of the electric power security of the Republic of Kazakhstan.