Ecuador will experience nationwide blackouts lasting eight hours for four nights next week as it enters a new period of electricity shortages caused by a severe drought in its main hydroelectric power stations which prevents internal demand from being met.
The Ecuadorian government announced in a statement on Monday that in principle there will be power outages throughout the country from 10 p.m. (5 a.m. Spanish peninsula time) to 6 a.m. local time (1 p.m. Spanish time) on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday of next week.
A national power outage with similar characteristics had already been announced for Wednesday evening. which the Executive had attributed to a measure aimed at carrying out maintenance work on the national electricity infrastructure in preparation for a new period of electricity rationing.
For this outage, the Minister of the Interior, Mónica Palencia, announced the government’s intention to declare a curfew to avoid excesses during the suspension of electricity, which will occur within the framework of the “internal armed conflict” that President Daniel Noboa declared to organized crime at the beginning of the year.
Armed Forces to Take Control of Mazar Reservoir on Thursdaythe second largest in the country, in accordance with the provisions of Noboa of the previous days to avoid the sabotage of this critical infrastructure for the supply of national electricity demand.
The Mazar reservoir, located in the southern Andean province of Azuay, has a capacity of 410 million cubic meters of water and serves to supply a complex of three hydroelectric plants located in the Paute River basin with an installed capacity of 1,757 megawatts.
However, In recent days, the level of this water reserve has dropped drastically due to the lack of rain. who has been living in the Andes for several months.
This is the third period of power cuts that Ecuador will experience in less than a year, after the one that occurred at the end of 2023 and others that occurred in mid-April of this year 2024.
Unlike previous periods of electricity rationing, where power cuts occurred during the day in different time slots and in different areas, this time they will cover the entire country at the same time and will take place at night.
“The established shutdown schedule was chosen with the aim of generating the least possible impact in productive activities and the organization of working hours,” the government said in its press release.
In this sense, the Noboa administration also ordered that the public sector carry out telework on Thursdays and Fridays of this week and next week.
It is estimated that Every hour of electricity rationing causes losses of around $12 million in the country.
Earlier this month, 11 of Ecuador’s 24 provinces experienced a power outage that lasted several hours due to a breakdown at the Paute hydroelectric plant, according to the National Electricity Company (Cenace).
The government had warned in previous months of the high likelihood that the country would return to power outages due to the acute dry season, and so it put in place contracting and leasing processes for power generation to address this crisis.
Among these processes, the rental of a floating power plant from the company Karpowership stands out.belonging to the Turkish energy group Karadeniz, which has been producing around 100 megawatts for the Ecuadorian electricity system since last week.
Electricity imported by Ecuador from Colombia also played a key role in the blackouts of previous months.
