frost fan

Power outages in Makhachkala brought residents to the barricades

The frosts that unexpectedly came to Dagestan led to large-scale power outages in the homes of Makhachkala residents. Almost all New Year's holidays, residents of the capital of the republic staged rallies and erected barricades demanding that the energy supply be restored, since the population regularly pays bills. RAO UES of Russia, which owns the Dagestan Energy Sales Company, indicates that restrictions on supplies to the Makhachkala city electric grid (municipal enterprise) took place only until December last year. The January outages, according to the energy holding, are due to the fact that the cable networks built almost 70 years ago simply could not withstand the frosts and the subsequent overloads.

Outraged Makhachkala residents took to the streets for the first time on December 29, when the lights went out in their houses. People completely blocked traffic in the city, resulting in local fights with car owners. On December 30, when residents of houses with power cut off again came to the barricades, riot police dispersed the participants in this action. Prior to this, RAO limited energy supplies to the Makhachkala city power grids for debts that reached 500 million rubles. (This is approximately the cost of the city’s annual energy consumption). At the same time, the energy holding emphasizes that after the restrictions were introduced, the city power grids for some reason began to turn off everyone, including residents who regularly paid for energy. In those days, the head of RAO Anatoly Chubais met with the mayor of Makhachkala, Said Amirov, and discussed the issue of paying off the debt of the city power grids to the Dagestan Energy Sales Company. RAO agreed to restructure part of the debt by May and lifted the restrictions, after which light appeared in many houses.

However, persistent frosts caused accidents in the city's power grids. Continued rains and a subsequent sharp drop in temperature led to the fact that part of the cable networks was damaged. In addition, with the advent of unusual cold weather for this region, people began to turn on electric heaters, which caused an overload of other networks and their failure. “The Dagestan Energy Sales Company has allocated equipment, machinery, and specialists who will help the Makhachkala city power grids eliminate the consequences of the emergency,” Margarita Nagoga, head of RAO’s media relations department, told Vremya Novostei. “At the same time, it is significant that no accidents occurred on Dagenergo’s networks.” Yesterday it was already possible to restore most of the power equipment, but there is no talk of a complete restoration of the system yet. However, warming arrived in the region in the evening (to zero degrees), which plays into the hands of energy workers.

A similar situation developed in many regions of Russia in 1999-2000, when municipal and regional electricity resellers, receiving payments from the population, preferred not to pay their suppliers. This led to restrictions on the part of RAO enterprises, but, as is known, it came to large-scale shutdowns only in the Primorsky Territory. There, due to non-payments and low tariffs set by local authorities, power engineers were not able to generate a sufficient amount of electricity when cold weather set in, and when people turned on the heaters, rolling blackouts occurred. However, after the resignation of Governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko, the situation changed.

RAO is confident that power outages can be avoided in Dagestan only when the city government begins to pay energy workers in a timely manner and invests in the modernization of its own power grid.

Nikolay GORELOV