Central Asia Blackout Traced to Key Hydropower Plant

Kyrgyzstan has provided some clarity on the source of the recent blackout that impacted four states in Central Asia, while vigorously denying blame for the cascading outage. Power outages were first reported in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek during the afternoon of August 14 before spreading to southern Kazakhstan and portions of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry initially attributed the disruption, which lasted several hours, to a “sudden change in the power flow” of the regional grid. Confusion…