Many Tajikistan’s rural areas are currently experiencing electricity shortages, meanwhile Tajikistan exported more than 2.5 billion kWh of electric power during the April-September period.
Many rural areas of Tajikistan have experienced electricity shortages since mid-September. The majority of country’s districts now have electricity only several hours per day.
Barqi Tojik (Tajikistan's national integrated power company) says temporary power outages have resulted from maintenance work on the power transmission lines, substation and hydropower plants.
“Our specialists are currently preparing the country’s power infrastructure for operation during autumn-winter season, and therefore, it may be necessary to temporary switch off some power transmission lines,” an official source at Barqi Tojik told Asia-Plus in an interview.
But some sources attribute current electricity outages in rural areas to Roghun reservoir filling. The first unit of the Roghun hydroelectric power plant (HPP) is expected to be introduced into operation on November 16.
Meanwhile, Tajikistan has nearly halved the export of electric power to neighboring Tajikistan. Last month, Tajikistan reportedly supplied some 182 million kWh of electricity to Uzbekistan, which was 200 million KWh fewer than in August. In July, Tajikistan exported 417 million kWh of electricity to the neighboring country. From April to June, Uzbekistan was receiving up to 120 million kWh of Tajik electricity per month. Thus, Tajikistan supplied more than 1.3 billion kWh of electric power to Uzbekistan during the April-September period.
Under the agreement reached between the two countries, Tajikistan has undertaken to supply 1.5 billion kWh of electricity to Uzbekistan this year at the rate of 2 cents per 1 kWh.
Tajikistan has also reduced electricity supplies to Afghanistan – from monthly supply of 200 million kWh in April-August to 158 million kWh in September.
Over the same six-month period, Tajikistan has exported only 350 million kWh of electricity to Kyrgyzstan.
In all, Tajikistan has exported more than 2.5 billion kWh of electric power to the mentioned countries in April-September this year.
This year, Tajikistan has earned 72.527 million U.S. dollars from electricity exports, which is 50 percent more than last year. .
Tajikistan has sufficient summer-time (defined as May 1 to September 30) hydropower surpluses to export to the neighboring countries and it able to export up to 5 billion kWh of electricity during summer period.
