By Sébastien Peyrouse (CACI Analyst)
In October and November 2009, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan stated their desire to end their participation in the Central Asian Power System, the shared regional power grid of the Central Asian region. Long misused, this collective institution is more than ever a victim of the deteriorating relations between governments owing to the question of water management. However, without any regional structure of cooperation, the energy situation of the two most fragile states, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, risks becoming further complicated during winter, leaving them exposed to hard power rationing. Some regions of Uzbekistan and of south Kazakhstan also risk incurring electricity shortages.
BACKGROUND: With the exception of northern Kazakhstan, which is connected to the Russian network, the whole of Central Asia had a collective system of electricity management, established in the Soviet period and maintained with difficulties. The Russian and Central Asian electricity networks have been reconnected since 2000, which has enabled a boost in electricity exchanges: Russia now buys cheap electricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and supplies its own electricity to the northern regions of Kazakhstan. However, the veritable stakes of the Central Asian Power System (CAPS) are internal to Central Asia. All the states have equal stakes in a public company based in Tashkent, the Central Asian United Dispatch Center (CA UDC), which is in charge of the maintenance of a synchronized and balanced system for the transfer and distribution of electricity for member countries. Despite this regional system, electricity transmission remains a major problem due to the absence of connection between certain regions within each country; to the energy interdependency between states, further complicated by bad bilateral relations; to considerable energy loss owing to the poor state of the lines; and to a lack of financing for the construction of new lines or repairing of old ones.