Blackout Strikes Chita After Thermal Power Plant Accident
Witness video shows thick smoke billowing from the Chita thermal power plant during the blackout.
In the early hours of February 5, from approximately 00:15, a significant part of Chita, a city in Siberia, Russia, lost power. The outages affected an area from the city center to the SNT (gardening non-profit cooperative) beyond Smolenka.
The districts Ostrov, Severny, Tsarsky, Oktyabrsky, Ugdan, MZhK, and Biofabrika, as well as some streets in the city center, were left without electricity. Some residents also reported a drop in temperature in their heating radiators.
Witnesses are sending videos showing thick smoke billowing from the Chita thermal power plant.
Andrey Chebykin, director of the Chitinskaya Generatsiya branch of PJSC TGK-14 (Territorial Generating Company No. 14), told a correspondent of Chita.Ru that an emergency situation occurred at the plant, resulting in the disconnection of some consumers. He said emergency crews have already begun work.
No additional information about the causes or restoration timeline is available at this time.
Chebykin emphasized that there was no «transformer explosion,» contrary to information circulating online.
«The emergency systems activated, and two bus systems were switched on,» he clarified.
Enabling two bus systems is a mode of parallel operation of busbars at substations used to improve power supply reliability. It allows load transfer without disconnecting consumers but is accompanied by an increase in short-circuit currents.
Residents are reporting addresses without power in our Telegram channel. As of the time of publication, there were already over 500 reports.
