Energy Without Borders: The Architecture of Power Connectivity in Central Asia

Central Asia already has physically interconnected power systems, yet the potential of this connectivity remains underused. Demand growth, the rapid deployment of renewables, grid constraints, reserve shortages and differences in national governance regimes are raising the requirements for reliability and coordination. The new EDB report shows how to turn existing physical connectivity into a managed regional architecture capable of lowering the cost of reliability, expanding electricity trade and improving the use of generation, grid and flexibility resources.

The report builds on the agenda of the EDB study “Central Asia Energy: Power Sector Modernization and Energy Transition”. Under national strategic plans, the countries of the region have announced the commissioning of at least 62.8 GW of new generating capacity by 2035, including renewables, hydropower, thermal and nuclear generation. The scale of planned additions means that the key question is shifting from simply adding megawatts to integrating them: whether new capacity will be available at the right hour, supplied with fuel or water, and able to deliver electricity through the grid.

Technical diagnostics show that installed capacity is not the same as available capacity. At the annual peak load hour on 10 December 2024, a significant share of capacity (17%) was constrained by fuel, hydrology, cold reserve and the technical condition of equipment. In certain monitored cross-sections, actual flows reached 110–125% of permissible levels.

The rapid development of renewables increases the requirements for grids and flexibility. Under conservative estimates, in Uzbekistan, with about 11.4 GW of renewables commissioned by 2028, forced generation curtailment could rise from 2.1 billion kWh in 2026 to 3.5 billion kWh in 2028, i.e. approximately 14.2% of all potential renewable output. This shows that further growth of solar and wind generation requires synchronized investment in grids, storage, reserves and regional balancing mechanisms.

The report assesses the economic effect of integration through four channels: trade arbitrage, joint reserving, reduced renewable curtailment and lower emergency costs. In the scenario of a fully developed regional architecture, the gross system effect is estimated at USD 640 million per year, and the net effect in some scenarios at up to USD 120 million per year.

The hydropower of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan holds a special place as a source of system flexibility. According to estimates, the technical potential for supplying balancing energy may reach up to 0.8 billion kWh for Kyrgyzstan and up to 1.02 billion kWh for Tajikistan. At the same time, the report stresses that hydro flexibility should be treated as a measurable and remunerated system resource, since its availability depends on water inflows, domestic demand, reservoir operating regimes and water management obligations.

The proposed regional market architecture consists of four successive tiers. At the first stage, the priorities are commercial metering, telemetry, secure data exchange and imbalance settlement rules; next come NTC/ATC calculation, expansion of automatic frequency and power control (AGC) and WAMS/WACS, and the launch of a pilot day-ahead market; in the long term, full real-time balancing, trading in system services and a regional resource adequacy assessment become possible.

Digitalization can increase usable transfer capacity without building major new lines. In Kazakhstan, the introduction of WACS has increased permissible grid transfer capacity by approximately 250 MW through real-time calculation of permissible flows. Alongside physical grid reinforcement, solutions such as AGC, WAMS/WACS, automated metering systems and secure communication channels form the digital foundation of future regional trade.

The report also examines five external energy corridors: Russia and the EAEU, CASA-1000, China, the Trans-Caspian Green Corridor and Turkmenistan–Iran. The key conclusion is that external corridors should complement a strong internal architecture of the Central Asian Power System: without developing grids, digital observability, reserves and commercial mechanisms, export projects will compete for scarce domestic resources.