Ecuador: Millions of people without electricity after nationwide blackout

Energy problems
Nationwide blackout in Ecuador – millions of people without electricity

A nationwide power outage has left millions of Ecuadorians without power. “It was a chain reaction. When certain power plants failed, a ‘blackout’ effect occurred: the demand for energy was suddenly greater than the supply, which led to the collapse of the national power grid,” said Energy Minister Roberto Luque on Wednesday. After a few hours, around 60 percent of the South American country’s households had power again. Electricity. On Wednesday evening (local time), Luque announced that 95 percent of the power supply had been restored.

The power outage hit Ecuadorians at 3:17 p.m. (10:17 p.m. CEST) without warning, particularly residents of the capital Quito and users of the subway there. Thousands of passengers had to be evacuated, some across the tracks. Internet access was temporarily interrupted and the mobile phone network was disrupted.

Transmission line failure causes blackout in Ecuador

Chaos broke out at intersections after the traffic lights failed, and city employees tried to regulate traffic. In the port city of Guayaquil, numerous people got stuck in elevators in large office and residential buildings, a journalist from the AFP news agency reported.

After an hour, electricity gradually returned from one district to another in Quito.

According to Luque, the specific cause of the nationwide power outage was “a failure of the Milagro Zhoray transmission line.” For years, “too little investment has been made in these power systems and networks” and “now we are feeling the consequences,” explained the minister, whose government has been in office since November. “The incident shows that the Ecuadorian energy system is in crisis. It was caused by a lack of investment in the maintenance and construction of power lines.” The energy crisis has several aspects: In April there were problems with generation, now there are problems with transmission.

Drought already caused power outages in April

In April, the Ecuadorian government declared a state of emergency due to power shortages. To ration energy, power was cut off for several hours at a time in various regions of the country. Due to a severe drought, water levels in the region’s reservoirs reached historic lows. Ecuador generates 78 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric power. The power outages stopped in May when the rains returned.

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AFP
DPA