Monday, July 15 2019 13:07

ArmInfo. In the absence of clear criteria and schemes it is difficult to assess the accident that occurred on July 10 in the energy system of Armenia. On July 15  at a press conference in Yerevan former chief engineer of "ArmEnergo"  state enterprise Spartak Hakobyan said.

To recall, on July 10 at 1:16pm of local time, the fifth block of the  Hrazdan TPP and the block of the Yerevan TPP were stopped. The main  cause of the incident, as the officials noted, was a power surge in  Iran's energy system, with which Armenia is connected with work in  asynchronous mode. As a result of the accident, the work of the  Yerevan Subway  was paralyzed, water supply interruptions began,  problems with telecommunications and traffic were caused due to the  inaction of traffic lights. In order to compensate for the shortage  of energy capacity, 27 MW were supplied from Georgia and about 150 MW  - from Iran.  Closer to 8:00pm all problems were resolved.

According to Spartak Hakobyan, last year the indicators of the energy  sector of the republic were presented to the Ministry of Energy of  Armenia, but so far no answer has been received. "We are not told  neither yes nor no, which cannot but cause surprise. Previously, all  our initiatives received either a positive or negative response.  Meanwhile, in the absence of indicators, it is difficult to imagine  how you can evaluate what happened," said Hakobyan.  He added that a  similar accident occurred 6 years ago - on November 2, 2013, when,  apart from the Syunik region, all other regions of the country were  deprived of electricity.  Apparently, no conclusions were drawn from  that accident. Meanwhile, as Yerevan former chief engineer of  "ArmEnergo" continued, energy is a living organism, and in an  accident at one site, this is reflected in another.

Spartak Hakobyan urged to wait for the results of the work of the  working group, and then draw certain conclusions. He recalled that  the Armenian electricity grid is connected to Iran's electricity  network by the air line since 1997, but at that time, due to the  Armenian side, there were frequent outages on the electricity  transmission line, which made the Iranian side turn it off  completely. As a result of intensive work, all the shortcomings were  eliminated, and since 1998, the electricity transmission lines  started working again, but at a qualitatively new level. "Then there  was enthusiasm and creativity, we worked 14-16 hours a day, today  there is a noticeable decline in these indicators," Spartak Hakobyan  stated .

According to him, the construction of a 400-kV Iran-Armenia  electricity transmission line is ongoing, thanks to which the  country's energy security will be significantly enhanced. However,  Spartak Hakobyan noted, in any case, it is necessary to develop and  introduce criteria and performance indicators for the country's  electric power system.

In turn,  former Director General of the Armenian NPP Suren Azatyan  pointed out the importance of in-depth analysis of the incident and  the development of a program of measures that preclude the repetition  of such accidents.