Several areas of Ecuador recorded blackouts on Wednesday night due to electricity shortage within the national system from the Andean country, as a result of a decrease in supply from Colombia, key in this dry season where the volume of water is low in Ecuadorian hydroelectric plants.
The Electricity outages were recorded in several sectors of the capital Quito and Guayaquilas well as in the Andean provinces of Tungurahua, Imbabura, Cotopaxi, Carchi and Loja, as well as in the Amazonian provinces of Napo, Morona Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe, as reported by some distributed companies, local media and users on social networks.
These blackouts occurred despite the fact that the Government had warned the day before that they could eventually occur on Tuesday but that there was no possibility of them occurring on Wednesday or Thursday since they had guaranteed sufficient supply to cover the demand for both days.
He Minister of Energy and Mines, Fernando Santos Alvite, denied this Wednesday in statements to the Primicias portal that these blackouts were due to supply problems and attributed them to the fact that “the demand for energy grew unusually and approached the level of supply.”
However, Santos Alvite and the executive director of the National Electricity Operator (Cenace), Gabriel Argüello, indicated in a press conference on Tuesday that, due to maintenance work on the Colombian transmission network, the import of electricity from that country It would only be done at full power between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday.
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The import of electricity from Colombia is common during the dry season in Ecuadora season of low rainfall that drastically reduces the flow of the Amazon rivers where most of the country’s hydroelectric plants are located.
The interruptions in the electricity supply have been recorded between 7:30 p.m. (00:30 GMT) and 9:00 p.m. (2:00 GMT) in some of the affected areas.
In the case of the Quito Electric Company, it noted that “this disconnection lasted a few minutes and the power was gradually restored,” while in the case of the Southern Regional Electric Company the outage lasted around an hour.
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To deal with these contingencies, Ecuadorian authorities seek to increase the production of thermoelectric plants and they are also exploring the possibility of importing surplus energy from Peru, although there is still no high-voltage electrical interconnection infrastructure as with Colombia.
EFE
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