DUSHANBE, January 9, Asia-Plus — Electricity supply in some 40 percent of the territory of Dushanbe remains limited and electricity supply to these areas is still being cut off in nighttime.
Issues related to work of economic and social facilities during winter months were discussed at January 8 working meeting of the Dushanbe mayor’s office presided over by the first deputy mayor Abdusattor Sulaymonov.
Speaking at the meeting, Aleskei Silantyev, deputy head of Barqi Tojik, the Tajik state energy company, noted that electricity supply in some 40 percent of the territory of Dushanbe have been limited and the electricity supplies to those areas have been cut off in nighttime – from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. He explained the restrictions by the two-fold reduction of electric power supply from Uzbekistan.
According to him, Tajikistan has received electrical power from Turkmenistan at the rate of 7 million kWh of electricity per day since last November (Tajikistan has to date received 150 million kWh of electricity of the planned 1.2 billion kWh of Turkmen electricity). In the meantime, Uzbekistan has reduced power supplies from electric from 3-4 million kWh per day in November-December to 1.9 million kWh.
The Barqi Tojik official also noted that compared to last year the Norak hydroelectric power (HPS) is now daily generating 600 million kWh less and the water level in the reservoir powering the station is six meters lower than usual. “Inflow of water in the Vakhsh River is now only 82 cubic meters per second,” said Silantyev, “Such a low inflow has not been registered since 1932.”
He also noted that the country’s requirements in electricity have annually grown by 3%-5%.
Silantyev noted that the Chkalovsk heat station that had been reintroduced into operation after being closed for 15 years was standing idle again for technical reasons. As far as the Yovon heat station is concerned, only of its units has been re-launched, but its capacity is very low – only 20 megawatt. The Dushanbe heat station now generates electricity at the rate of only 3.5 million kWh per day.
“We are waiting for launch of the first of four units of the Sangtuda-1 hydropower plant,” said the Barqi Tojik official, “After that Tajikistan will receive additional 2.5-3 million kWh of electricity per day.”
He also noted that some substations have outlived their service life.
Representative from Dushanbegaz (Dushanbe natural-gas distributor) touched upon the issue of the collection of funds from the public and enterprises. According to him, the rate of collection of funds for gas consumption has to date amounted to only 15 percent.
The meeting also discussed the results of inspection of work of passenger transport facilities.
