Tag Archives: electricity

Azerbaijan to link energy system with Russia

JULY 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s energy minister Natig Aliyev said that his country is ready to link its energy system with Russia and Iran and create a north-south energy corridor. Once complete, the corridor would allow Iran to import around 700 megawatt of electricity per year. Iran currently imports electricity from Armenia. At the end of June, Iran and Azerbaijan completed a cross-border power transmission line.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)

Kyrgyz President signs CASA-1000 deals

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev signed a range of laws that ratify domestic and international agreements on CASA-1000, an electricity transmission project that will send power from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Loans from international lenders, including the World Bank and the Islamic Development Bank, will make up 70% of Kyrgyzstan’s total funding for the project.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Uzbek PM warns Tajikistan on dangers of Rogun

JULY 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbek PM Shavkat Mirziyoyev complained to his Tajik counterpart over the signing of a $3.9b contract with Italy’s Salini Impregilo to build the Rogun dam and hydropower station on the Vakhsh river.

Uzbekistan has always opposed the project, which it has said will reduce essential water flow from the Pamir mountains to the Amu Darya river which irrigates Uzbek cotton fields.

For Tajikistan, Rogun carries symbolic value, it will be the world’s tallest dam, and is also economically important.

Mr Mirziyoyev said Tajikistan’s stance will trigger a reaction.

“The persistence with which the Government of Tajikistan seeks at all costs to continue construction of the Rogun hydroelectric power station, cannot but cause anxiety for the possible dangerous and irreparable consequences of such risky steps taken by the Tajik side,” he wrote.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Electricity prices increase in Azerbaijan

JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s government said that it is considering an increase in electricity prices for households of 16.7%, local media reported. The price will increase from 0.06 manat to 0.07 manat/kWh. This is the first price increase since 2007. Domestic electricity prices in the South Caucasus are sensitive. People in Armenia and Georgia have demonstrated against tariff increases over the past few years.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

Armenia’s power company to invest in rebuilding

JULY 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s power generation company Hydro Corporation said it will invest 8.9b drams ($4.2) to rebuild its small hydropower station on the Argichi river in the east of the country. The hydropower station was built in 2013 and financed through a loan from Germany’s development bank KfW.

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(News report from Issue No. 290, published on July 22 2016)

ADB sends loan to upgrade Azerbaijan’s electricity

JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After lengthy negotiations, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) decided to loan $750m to Azerbaijan, to co-fund improvements to the country’s power distribution sector.

The aim is to connect peripheral regions outside Baku, which suffer from chronic system losses, to the main grid and reduce inefficiency and waste. But with electricity generation falling, Azerbaijan needs to put more attention and effort towards its upstream power sector, rather than the downstream.

It’s true that Azerbaijan is self- sufficient and produces all the electricity it consumes domestically, as the ADB also said.

The worry is rather on the shrinking margin of extra production allocated to exports.

In 2015 electricity exports halved compared to the previous year according to Azerbaijan’s customs agency. Azerbaijan exported 276.8m kWh of electricity in 2015 against 588.3m kWh in 2014.

And the problems continued this year.

In the first half of 2016, electricity generation at Azerlight, the country’s main producer, fell by 6%, compared to the same period last year, to 10.8b kWh. Consumption, on the other hand, continued to grow exponentially at annual rates of 5-9% since 2010.

For quite some time Azerbaijan has said it wants to export more electricity to its neighbours Turkey and Iran, a power export target that seems in vogue across the region currently.

Now this option seems to be falling off the priority list as the government has become increasingly worried that Azerbaijan could soon need external help to fulfil its domestic demand.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Briefing: Tajikistan’s Rogun dam project

JULY 15 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — >>Right. Let’s get started. The Rogun Dam. What is it and what is it all about?

>>For Tajikistan and President Rakhmon, the Rogun dam project is vitally important. If it is ever built, and the plans have been knocking around since the Soviet era, the Rogun dam will be the tallest dam in the world at up to 335 m. It will also double Tajikistan’s power generation capacity. The problem is that the dam has proved highly controversial, domestically and internationally, and is also expensive to build.

>>Hang on. Slow down. This is a lot take on. So, Rogun is massive but why is it controversial?

>>It’s controversial because human rights group have accused the government of forcibly moving thousands of people away from the Vakhsh River valley, the area that will be dammed and flooded. The government has also imposed a Rogun dam tax on people to pay for the project. This has gone down badly with human rights groups. Externally, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan’s neighbour, hates the idea of the Rogun dam. It worries that the dam will divert water from irrigating its cotton fields.

>>How serious are Uzbekistan’s concerns?

>>Central Asia is a fragile region. If Uzbekistan is making threatening noises
towards Tajikistan, people need to take notice. Analysts and diplomats have spoken of water wars in Central Asia. I’m not saying that the Rogun dam is going to trigger a war but it is another pressure point that people need to watch.

>>Got it. So with all these obstacles and problems why is Tajikistan pushing for problems?

>>It’s become Rakhmon’s pet project. He probably has another five or ten years left in office and it really feels like he wants and needs the Rogun dam to be his legacy. It’s also become vitally important for Tajikistan’s electricity generation sector. Electricity is becoming an important export commodity for Tajikistan as it has signed up to be the main power generator for the so-called CASA-1000 project.

>>CASA-1000? What is that?

>>It’s the World Bank-backed project to build a power transmission network from Tajikistan to Pakistan. It will cost around $1.2b, cross Afghanistan and be operational, if it all goes to plan, by 2019. The challenge is both security and power generation.CurrentlyTajikistan, and to a lesser extent Kyrgyzstan, doesn’t have the capacity to generate enough power to meet its CASA- 1000 commitments. That’s where Rogun comes in.

>>And the financing? This seems to be an expensive project just when the region is trying to deal with a financial crisis. Where is the finance coming from?

>>Good question. We’re not entirely clear. We’ve only been told that it is a mix of government funds and private investment. Who the private investors are and what their motives are is unknown.

>>I see. So what next?

>>Well, the Tajik government awarded a $3.9b contract to Italian builder Salini Impregilo to start construction work on the dam. We’re still waiting for work to begin but Salini Impregilo has said it will kick off soon. This has been a stop-start project so actually seeing the diggers go in and the workers start to build the dam is important. If this does happen, it’ll dominate news headlines for years to come.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Power production falls in Azerbaijan

JULY 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Electricity generation fell by 6% in H1 2016, compared to the same period last year Azerlight, the country’s main producer, said in a statement. The company did not justify the cut in production, which stood at 10.8b kWh. Should this trend continue, it could erode Azerbaijan’s electricity surplus. According to official statistics, consumption, on the other hand, continued to grow exponentially since 2010 at annual rates of 5-9%.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

ADB agrees $750m loan to update Azeri power

JULY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it will lend $750m to Azerbaijan to co-fund improvements to the country’s outdated regional power distribution systems.

The project, worth around $1b, aims to refurbish the distribution network and the efficiency of Azerishiq (Azerlight), the state-owned power distribution company.

Azerbaijan’s government will invest the remaining $250m. The ADB said that it will send its $750m loan in three tranches of $250m.

“This ADB program will help address the bottleneck in electricity supply and provide round-the-clock and reliable electricity to households and entities in secondary cities and rural areas in Azerbaijan,” Sean O’Sullivan, director general in ADB’s Central Asia Department, said.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)

Tajikistan’s Rogun dam start surprises people

DUSHANBE, JULY 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The revival of the Rogun hydropower project, for which Tajikistan awarded a $3.9b tender last week, surprised both analysts and people living in Dushanbe.

Most had assumed that the project first dreamt up under the Soviet Union had been mothballed. There had been no major break- through on the project for the past few years and the middle of an economic downturn is no time to start a major infrastructure project.

Still, it appears Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon had other ideas. Now, Italy’s Salini Impregilo, the construction company that won the tender, says it will complete the dam, set to be the world’s tallest, and the first two power stations by 2018.

Manu, a 28-year-old student in Dushanbe, summed up many Dushanbe-residents’ thoughts when he said that he had believed that the dam would never be built.

“I thought we would not build Rogun any time soon,” he told the Bulletin’s Tajikistan correspondent. “It all happened unexpectedly but I am excited.”

If Rogun is successfully completed it will double Tajikistan’s power production and turn it into a major regional electricity exporter.

Analysts, though, were sceptical about the aggressive timeline that Salini Impregilo has set.

Filippo Menga, researcher at the University of Manchester who has studied Tajikistan’s hydropower, told the Bulletin that large dams are never built on time.

“There is still uncertainty on who is going to fund the Rogun dam, delays are clearly foreseeable. The timeline is simply not realistic,” he said.

The Rogun dam project is cer- tainly ambitious and will change Tajikistan’s fortunes if it is success- fully completed. It will also leave a lasting legacy for the 63-year-old Mr Rakhmon who, if reports are to be believed, is already thinking about his succession strategies.

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(News report from Issue No. 289, published on July 15 2016)