The incident occurred at the Toktogul HPP just a few days before the New Year. The first of the four operational hydro units went offline on December 23 – the morning after energy workers celebrated their professional holiday. The second unit failed five days later, on December 28. Energy workers stated that the cause was a worn-out oil cable, which cannot be completely replaced: after forty years of operation at the HPP, it and its analogs are no longer produced anywhere in the world. As a result, Kyrgyz citizens were promised rolling blackouts after the New Year holidays. Additionally, this incident prompted the Prime Minister of the Republic, Temir Sariev, to call for an acceleration of the denunciation of the agreement with Russia regarding the construction of the Kambaratinsk HPP-1 and the Upper Naryn cascade of HPPs, as previously stated by President Almazbek Atambayev.
However, the anticipated energy collapse and "rolling blackouts" did not occur. The abnormally warm weather during the round-the-clock repair work at the HPP helped reduce electricity consumption, and the two hydro units managed the load without much difficulty. Moreover, the third of the four hydro units, which was damaged during the accident, was launched the day before. This was quite timely: the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Kyrgyz Republic issued a storm warning for January 17-19, predicting a sharp drop in temperature.
- Yesterday, January 14, at 17:20, the block transformer T-2 at the Toktogul HPP was taken out of repair and energized. Hydro unit GA 2 is fully carrying the designated load. The staff of the Toktogul HPP brought the failed unit back into operation in the shortest possible time, - reported the head of the public relations department of JSC "Electric Stations," Takzhana Aydaralieva. - Over the past day, the country consumed 52 million 094 thousand kWh, and this consumption is fully covered by our generation. As of today, electricity imports are not being carried out. The volume of water in the Toktogul reservoir is currently 10 billion 736 million cubic meters, which is almost 2 billion cubic meters more than last year's volume.
In case energy consumption suddenly rises sharply, JSC "Electric Stations" has agreed with the Ekibastuz GRES for the supply of an additional 100 million kilowatt-hours.