Cost of a Minute Without Power for Almaty's Economy

Each minute of a complete halt in Almaty's economic activity could roughly correspond to about 71 million tenge. This estimate was provided by the Telegram channel PROTENGE following the massive power outage that occurred in the city on August 14, reports infohub.kz.

The calculation is based on Almaty's gross regional product for 2025, which amounted to 37.28 trillion tenge. Dividing this sum by the number of days in a year, then by 24 hours and 60 minutes, yields about 70.9 million tenge of economic activity per minute.

Thus, ten minutes of a complete halt in the city's economic activity, in terms of GRP, corresponds to approximately 709 million tenge, an hour – about 4.25 billion tenge, and two hours – around 8.5 billion tenge.

However, this is not about the actual damage from the power outage. Some economic activity may be rescheduled after power is restored, and some enterprises and organizations can continue operating thanks to backup power sources. The calculation only shows the scale of the economy potentially affected by the blackout.

The massive power outage occurred on August 14. The disruptions affected the Bostandyk, Nauryzbai, Auezov, and Alatau districts of Almaty. Another ten districts were left without electricity in the Almaty region.

According to Alatau Zharyk Kompaniyasy JSC, at 14:38, three 500 kV overhead power lines – L-5400, L-5300, and L-5320, owned by KEGOC – tripped. After that, emergency automation activated. The amount of disconnected load was about 300 MW.

The consequences of the accident affected not only residential buildings and offices. In Almaty, some traffic lights stopped working, severe traffic jams occurred on the roads, and police officers were deployed to intersections to regulate traffic. Due to the shutdown of pumping equipment, there was also a risk of water supply disruptions.

Power problems were also observed outside Almaty and the Almaty region. Taldykorgan and Tekeli, as well as eight districts of the Zhetysu region, were left without electricity.

A major power outage in southern Kazakhstan occurred on January 25, 2022. The cause was an emergency imbalance in the Central Asian energy system, which led to a power surge on the 500 kV transit "North – East – South Kazakhstan."

In Almaty and the Almaty region, the volume of restrictions then reached about 1000 MW, and more than 92,000 consumers were left without electricity.