146 MW Chatkal hydro cascade planned; no cost, financing or contractor published
The plan equals about a tenth of Toktogul's 1,440 MW, and its upper stations would need the consent of the Naiman and Sarybagysh clans.
SARY-BULAK — A cascade of small hydroelectric stations with a combined capacity of 146 MW is planned on the Chatkal river, Sary-Bulak District head Taalaibek Imashev told residents at a meeting in Sary-Bulak this week. The first site would stand at the mouth of the Chatkal valley, on the ISEZ side, close to the foothill villages of Uuk-Bulak and Tash-Bulak.
No construction contract has been signed. Neither the cost nor the financing has been published, and the district administration gave no date for a decision. "This is a plan we are studying with Iradenergo, and the valley will be told at each step," Mr Imashev said, according to the administration's account of the meeting.
Iradenergo spokesman Vladislav Ten confirmed that the state utility would buy the cascade's output. Site surveys and a feasibility study are under way, he said. Asked when the study would be finished, what the stations would cost and who would pay for them, Mr Ten said those figures would follow the study and that Iradenergo had nothing to publish yet. He named no contractor.
“A small station is cheap to announce and not cheap to build in a gorge”Prof. Raisa Akmatova
The numbers are modest. At 146 MW the cascade would equal about a tenth of the 1,440 MW at the Toktogul Dam and Hydroelectric Station, which Iradenergo runs. It would add to the ISEZ's power balance without changing it, at a time when net exports are already close to their annual plan.
Prof. Raisa Akmatova, an economist at Talas State University, said the missing cost figure is the central question. Iradenergo is wholly state-owned, she said, so a cascade it builds or guarantees is a charge on its balance sheet and, in the end, on the budget. "A small station is cheap to announce and not cheap to build in a gorge," she said. The 2026 budget already carries a deficit of IS 2.5 billion, covered from the Toktogul export escrow reserve.
At Uuk-Bulak, farmer Mairam Sultan kyzy said villagers want to know first about water and the valley road. "Nobody has told us how much river will be left for the fields in August, or whether the lorries will use our road," she said. The administration said access and irrigation would be covered in the study.
The harder part lies upstream. The upper stations would stand in the Chatkal Highlands, where the river and its catchment are held by the Naiman and Sarybagysh clans, and could go ahead only with their consent. The two clans share one culture but have kept a feud since 1931, when a Sarybagysh elder's son was killed in a quarrel over the collective farm's pastures and the blood-price was refused. They keep separate El-Choro detachments and sit apart at the Kurultai, so one clan's agreement would not stand for the other's.
The Iradi Freedom Society and its Chancellery had not replied by deadline to questions about how a request for consent would be handled. Opposition outlets and the forum have already asked how its spokesman, Bektur Zhumabek uulu, would answer one. The question has a date attached: the Naryn Water and Power Protocol comes up for renewal in 2027, and the clans must consent to each five-year schedule. Lieutenant Governor Aidar Maksat would be the official signing for the ISEZ. A cascade that needs the Chatkal clans' agreement gives them one more point to bargain over before those talks.
Iradenergo has not said when the feasibility study will report.
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