Frost and Power Outages in a Village Near Chelyabinsk

On Saturday, January 24, a prolonged power outage occurred in the village of Malinovka near Chelyabinsk, as well as in the microdistricts «Privilegiya» and «Bely Khutor». According to local residents, the disruptions began at night, and by evening, the light and heating, which is dependent on electricity, were gone for several hours at a temperature of about -30°C (-22°F).

Residents describe the situation as critical. «It»s freezing outside, and in Malinovka there are outages again, the voltage is low. There was no electricity for three hours at night, it was turned on at 7 a.m., the house had just started to warm up and there was another outage for an hour. At 5 p.m. it was cut off again, the house doesn«t have time to warm up,» said Igor. «People are freezing, equipment in the house is breaking down.»

Other local residents confirm the problems. «This morning, first there was no power in one phase, on the second phase the voltage was 120 volts, on the third — 220 volts, and it was like that until about 4:30 p.m., and then the light completely disappeared,» says Lyudmila. «How long can they keep tormenting people? My children have already caught colds. When will they fix it? And we»ve had issues with electricity all winter.«

According to the Rosseti Ural company, the cause was two consecutive failures. First, a transformer broke down, which was replaced with the electricity turned off. Then in the evening, a wire broke on the power transmission line supplying the settlements.

• By 11 p.m., power engineers reported the restoration of electricity supply. The power transmission line was put under load, but residents were asked to limit the use of high-power appliances.
• As a backup, four reserve generators with a total capacity of 580 kW were delivered to the village. They are planned to be connected to the streets in stages to distribute the load and stabilize the voltage.
• In Malinovka, round-the-clock duty of specialists has been organized for rapid response to new malfunctions.

This is not the first large-scale outage in this area. On January 15, during an abnormal frost, Malinovka was also left without light, heating, and water due to damage to the power line, which required the deployment of heating points.

The problems with the reliability of electricity supply in these settlements are systemic. The capacity of the local grids cannot cope with the growing load. Although in 2024 they announced the start of designing a new substation, the timeline for its construction is still unknown, and even after the recent launch of the «Kremenkul» substation, residents continue to complain about disruptions.