Kazakhstan envisions a transition towards a green economy in the next decades, which poses an immense challenge as the country's economy and energy system depends heavily on hydrocarbon resources. Here, it lacks inclusive and transparent tools assessing technical, economic, and environmental implications resulting from changes in its electricity system. We present such a tool: our comprehensive techno-economic unit-commitment model determines the hourly least-cost generation dispatch, based on publicly available data on the technical and economic characteristics of the system. It accounts for particularities of the Kazakh electricity system by representing combined heat and power, and endogenously determining line losses. Model results examine two typical weeks: winter (annual peak load) and summer (hour of lowest annual load) presenting regionally and temporally disaggregated results for power generation, line utilization, and nodal prices. In an application to market design, the paper compares nodal and zonal pricing as two possible pricing schemes in Kazakhstan for the envisioned strengthening of the day-ahead market. The model analyze the current Kazakh electricity system and can be easily expanded to assess the sector's future development. Possible applications include investment in generation and transmission infrastructure, policy assessment for renewables integration, carbon pricing, emission reduction, and questions of market design. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.