Last year’s blackout has reportedly cost the Tajik Aluminum Company (TALCO) at more than 8 million U.S. dollars.
Over the first two months of this year, Tajik aluminum smelter has reduced aluminum production by 36.3 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies (MoINT).
In January-February this year, TALCO has produced only 16,300 tons of primary aluminum, which was 9,300 tons fewer than in the same period last year, an official source at a MoINT told Asia-Plus in an interview.
A total amount of output produced by Tajik aluminum smelter over the same two month period was 61.7 million somoni, which was 25.4 million somoni fewer than in January-February 2016.
The decrease in aluminum production has resulted from delay in delivery of raw materials, petroleum coke and cryolite, as well as the fall in the international price for primary aluminum, the source noted.
According to him, the last year’s blackout has also caused financial losses to TALCO.
The blackout reportedly led to the cessation of 40 electrolysis baths; each of them costs 200,000 U.S. dollars. As a result of this, the company has incurred 65 million somoni losses (equivalent to 8.2 million U.S. dollars for the beginning of 2017).
Recall, nearly all of Tajikistan was hit by a blackout on October 28, 2016 following an unexpected outage at its largest power producer, the Nurek hydroelectric power plant (HPP).
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 another supplier, Pamir Energy Company (PamirEnergy).
The power went off at about 18:30 local time and came back on three hours later.
Igor Sattarov, a spokesman for TALCO, said on October 31 that Barqi Tojik had tried and failed to restore electricity deliveries to the smelter at 20:40 on October 28. “Power supply was resumed only at 21:30, but Barqi Tojik needed another one and a half hours to resume normal power supply to the smelter,” he told Asia-Plus in an interview. The utility brought delivery volumes back to the regular level at 23:18, he explained.
The blackout occurred just one day before Barqi Tojik began construction work on the dam that will power the Roghun HPP.
The last year’s blackout was reportedly resulted from malfunction in the automatic anti-damage system of the Regar 500 kV substation.
The Tajik Aluminum Company (TALCO) is one of the ten largest aluminum smelters in the world and provides up to 70% of the country’s foreign currency earnings, consuming 40% of the country’s electrical power. TALCO is wholly owned by the Tajik government. Tajikistan does not mine alumina but imports the raw material through tolling arrangements.
Construction of the Tajik aluminum plant (TadAZ) began in 1972, and the first pouring of aluminum took place on March 31, 1975. On April 3, 2007, TadAZ was officially renamed to TALCO – Tajik Aluminum Company. The Tajik aluminum smelter had the capacity to produce 517,000 metric tons per year.
