TBILISI, August 5 – Large parts of Georgia lost electricity again on Wednesday evening, marking the country’s third major power outage in less than two weeks.
The Georgian State Electrosystem said the latest shutdown happened during technical work at the Enguri hydropower plant following the nationwide grid failures of July 24 and July 25.
According to the company, engineers were examining equipment at the plant and needed to operate the electricity system in an isolated mode at frequencies different from the normal level. This caused a temporary loss of power across the country.
Electricity had been restored to Tbilisi and parts of the regions by 21:52 on Wednesday, Interpressnews reported. The State Electrosystem said supply had been partially restored and would return throughout the country shortly.
The company said emergency measures were taken immediately after the outage.
Wednesday’s failure was the third large-scale power cut in Georgia during the past two weeks. The first nationwide blackout began shortly after midnight on Friday, July 24, with electricity gradually restored during the morning. A second major outage followed at around 08:00 on Saturday, July 25.
After those incidents, the State Security Service opened a criminal investigation for interference with an important facility with the aim of threatening state interests.
Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said then, the consecutive failures unusual and said investigators should determine whether they involved human error, outside interference or sabotage.
