Moscow, 20 February 2004. Unqualified actions by technical personnel at Tbilisi TPP have lead to a 40% reduction in power supply to Georgia's capital Tbilisi. Currently, the power plant is not operating, but its electricity distribution unit is used to supply Russian electricity to Tbilisi and transfer power to Azerbaijan.

During the night of 18-19 February, a transformer was switched off at Tbilisi TPP, as a result of which energy supply from Russia to the Georgian capital and electricity transfers to Azerbaijan were discontinued. Trying to remove the failure, the plant's personnel disconnected by mistake the 6kV cable providing power to generation unit No. 9 of Tbilisi TPP. This led to an emergency stop and a significant reduction in energy supply to Tbilisi. By now, the generation unit has been started and is working at 110 MW. In the next few hours the production will be restored to the usual level 230 MW.