Kazakhstan rations power after coal-fired plant outages

October 15, 20219:52 AM UTCUpdated ago

Fishermen are seen near Eurasian Resources Group's (ERG) Aksu Power Plant on the outskirts of the town of Aksu, north-eastern Kazakhstan, February 21, 2018. Picture taken February 21, 2018. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov

ALMATY, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan is limiting power supply to some consumers a day after three major coal-fired power stations suffered shutdowns, grid operator KEGOC said on Friday.

It said limits are being imposed on consumers using greater-than-planned amounts of energy and warned the outages could pose a risk to grid operations.

"These emergency power plant outages will lead to unacceptable power deviations at the border with Russia's energy system, overloading the interstate power transmission lines and creating a risk of a systemic malfunction," it said in a statement.

KEGOC said the GRES-1, GRES-2 power plants as well as the Aksu plant operated by the Eurasian Energy Company, all located in the northeastern city of Ekibastuz close to the Russian border, suffered outages on Thursday.

Parent firm Eurasian Resources Group said the outage at its plant had been scheduled and it would resume operations later on Friday.

The total loss of generating capacity exceeded 1,000 megawatts, KEGOC said.

Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; editing by Mark Potter and Jason Neely