Shymkent Partially Blacked Out as Power Grid Systems Trigger

Shymkent, Kazakhstan, experienced partial power outages affecting 38,760 residential and 4,790 commercial customers on August 14. The blackouts began around 2:37 PM when overhead 110 kV power lines tripped, triggering emergency protection systems.

The incident was caused by an emergency shutdown of trunk lines operated by KEGOC, the national grid operator. Authorities are investigating the circumstances surrounding the line failures and the activation of automated systems. In Shymkent, 114.4 megawatts of load were temporarily disconnected. Similar disruptions occurred in the Turkistan, Zhambyl, and Kyzylorda regions, where automatic load shedding systems disconnected 92.6, 142, and 31.6 megawatts, respectively.

Nationally, KEGOC reported that two emergency protection systems, special automatic load shedding and automatic frequency shedding, were triggered in the Southern region. The separation of the 500 kV "North–South" and "North-East–South" transit power lines led to a total disconnection of 380.6 megawatts by the load shedding system. The automatic frequency shedding system further disconnected 234.8 megawatts, bringing the total load disconnected by both systems to 615.4 megawatts.

Power disruptions also began around 3:00 PM in Almaty and the Almaty region, affecting multiple districts. Failures on 500 kV overhead power lines owned by KEGOC were reported. The blackouts in Almaty led to traffic light failures and communication disruptions, causing significant gridlock across the city. Traffic controllers were deployed to manage the chaos.