A balloon cut power in Tashkent for 33 minutes: what would a bitcoin farm and the state have lost?
At 19:05 on 19 October a balloon fell onto the open switchyard of the Aksa Toshkent power plant, output dropped from 460 MW to 185 MW and four districts of the capital went dark. How much a bitcoin data center would have earned on the lost 275 MW, and what those megawatts were worth to the state: a purely hypothetical calculation.
What happened? According to the Ministry of Energy, at 19:05 on 19 October a balloon fell onto the open switchyard of the Aksa Toshkent thermal power plant in Kibray district. The protection system tripped and the plant's output fell from 460 MW to 185 MW. CCTV cameras caught the moment.
Who lost power? Parts of Yunusabad, Almazar, Mirzo Ulugbek and Shaykhontohur districts of Tashkent. The ministry's timeline: at 19:09 power partly returned in Yunusabad and Almazar, at 19:25 supply was fully restored through backup sources, and by 19:38 every consumer had power. So for those who waited longest, the outage lasted about 33 minutes.
How much is 275 MW? In one hit the plant lost 275 MW. If an average flat uses 200 kWh a month (about 0.28 kW at any moment), 275 MW is the simultaneous load of roughly a million flats (our rough estimate). The energy lost in 33 minutes, 151 MWh, is a month of electricity for more than 750 families.
When did the plant get back to full output? Nobody has said officially: the ministry only gave the times when consumers got power back, and they were fed from backup sources. So below there are two sets of numbers: the real 33 minutes, and scenarios where the plant ran at 185 MW for 1, 2 or 3 hours. The durations in the scenarios are our assumption.
A hypothetical farm: the inputs. Imagine all of the lost 275 MW went into a bitcoin data center. Machines: the newest Antminer S23e U2H at 10 J/TH. Then 275 MW = 27.5 EH/s, about 2.7% of the whole bitcoin network (~1,025 EH/s). Hashprice: $36.75 per PH/s per day after the 16 October difficulty jump. Bitcoin price: ~$82,500 on 19 October. Exchange rate: CBU rate for 17 October, $1 = 12,055.90 soum. We ignore cooling and other costs, so this is an upper bound.
The formula. Revenue per hour = 27,500 PH/s × $36.75 ÷ 24 ≈ $42,100 an hour, or ≈ 507.7 million soum, or ≈ 0.51 BTC. Loss = revenue per hour × hours of outage.
For the real 33 minutes the farm would have missed ≈ $23,160, or ≈ 279 million soum (≈ 0.28 BTC). One hour: ≈ $42,100 (≈ 508 million soum). Two hours: ≈ $84,200 (≈ 1.02 billion soum). Three hours: ≈ $126,300 (≈ 1.52 billion soum, ≈ 1.53 BTC).
Now the fun part. That is revenue, not profit. While the power is off, the farm doesn't pay for electricity either. If it runs on the public grid at the double tariff for miners (2,200 soum per kWh ≈ $0.18), 275 MW costs ≈ $50,200 an hour against ≈ $42,100 of revenue. Such a farm loses ≈ $8,100 for every hour it runs, so the 33-minute outage would have saved it ≈ $4,400. The balloon would have been a gift.
If the farm runs on its own solar plant at 2 cents, the picture flips: electricity ≈ $5,500 an hour, net profit ≈ $36,600 an hour. Then the real loss is ≈ $20,100 for 33 minutes (≈ 243 million soum), ≈ $36,600 for 1 hour (≈ 441 million soum), ≈ $73,200 for 2 hours (≈ 883 million soum) and ≈ $109,800 for 3 hours (≈ 1.32 billion soum). For scale: such a farm needs about 31,800 S23e U2H units at ~$9,500 each, so the machines alone cost ~$300 million.
The state's side. Formula: lost energy (MWh) × tariff. The tariff for businesses is 1,100 soum per kWh, for households (up to 200 kWh a month) 650 soum. The real 33 minutes: 151 MWh, which is ≈ 166 million soum (≈ $13,800) at 1,100 soum, or ≈ 98 million soum (≈ $8,200) at 650 soum.
If the plant had stayed at 185 MW longer (assumption): 1 hour, 275 MWh, ≈ 302 million soum (≈ $25,100); 2 hours, 550 MWh, ≈ 605 million soum (≈ $50,200); 3 hours, 825 MWh, ≈ 908 million soum (≈ $75,300), all at the 1,100-soum tariff. At the household tariff the sums are about 40% lower.
An important caveat. This is the value of electricity that wasn't sold, not money that definitely left the state's pocket. Most consumers were quickly switched to backup sources, so other plants made up the shortfall. Aksa's contract runs for 25 years at a guaranteed capacity price in US dollars, but who pays whom and how much in a case like this hasn't been made public, so we left it out. Losses of businesses, shops and lifts that stopped during the outage aren't in these numbers either.
All figures use the bitcoin price, hashprice and CBU rate of 16–19 October and are purely hypothetical.
Sources: YuzNews (Ministry of Energy, 19.10.2026), UzDaily (Ministry of Energy, 19.10.2026), Spot.uz (Tashkent city grids, 19.10.2026), Aksa Enerji (Tashkent CCGT), Hashrate Index (Q4 2026 heatmap), CoinTribune (difficulty, 16.10.2026), The Crypto Times (BTC price, 19.10.2026), Yep.uz (tariffs from 01.06.2026), Norma.uz (CBU rate)
News is for information only and is not investment advice. Use only crypto providers licensed in Uzbekistan.