DUSHANBE, October 8. /TASS/. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved additional grant finaning of $15 million to help Tajikistan scale up an ongoing project to reconnect the country’s power system to the Central Asian Power System (CAPS) through interconnections with neighboring Uzbekistan, the ADB press service reported.

"The additional financing will construct a new 22 kilometer, 500-kilovolt transmission line in northern Tajikistan - between the country’s Sughd substation and the New Syrdarya substation in Uzbekistan," the report says.

The press service noted that "it will scale up the transmission capacity for power exports and imports among CAPS countries, which include Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and strengthen infrastructure to prevent grid failures which lead to blackouts."

"The project will also help ensure Tajikistan’s power system is ready to provide regulating capacity for the smooth integration of renewable energy in the region. In the long term, it will become a key component of the power evacuation scheme for the Rogun hydropower plant in Tajikistan," the ADB added.

On June 21, the Minister of Energy and Water Resources of Tajikistan Daler Juma announced that the republic was reconnected to the unified energy system of the Central Asian countries. However, he did not specify in which part of the country the connection was completed. In February, speaking at a press conference the minister reported that the connection of the system would be resumed in April in the west of the country on the border with Uzbekistan, and negotiations were underway to build in an additional line in the north of the republic.