Ecuador was plunged into a nationwide power outage on Wednesday afternoon, and the country’s public works minister blamed the emergency on the failure of a critical power transmission line .
The minister, Roberto Luque, said in a statement about that it had received a report from the national electricity operator, CENACE, concerning “a failure of the transmission line which caused a cascading disconnection, so that there is no energy service in all the countries “.
He said authorities were working to resolve the outage “as quickly as possible.” Within hours, power had started to return to parts of Quito, the capital.
This South American country of 18 million inhabitants has been grappling with an energy crisis for several years. Failing infrastructure, a lack of maintenance and a reliance on imported energy have all contributed to repeated power outages, although none have been as widespread as this one.
Around 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, the majority of Ecuadorians found themselves without electricity.
Most of the country’s energy comes from neighboring Colombia, a country that struggles to produce enough electricity for its own domestic consumption.
A $2.25 billion Chinese-built hydroelectric plant, the Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, was supposed to help solve the Ecuador problem. Located on the Coca River in Napo province, 100 km east of Quito, it is Ecuador’s largest energy project.
On the contrary, the project has become a real headache for the Ecuadorian authorities. Several construction errors gave rise to a dispute between the Ecuadorian authorities and the Chinese company.
The country woke up in April to widespread blackouts, which the Energy Ministry attributed to historically low water flows after a prolonged drought, rising temperatures and a lack of maintenance of the country’s power system .
For weeks, the ministry imposed daily power outages that lasted several hours. President Daniel Noboa declared a state of energy emergency, ordered businesses and government offices to close for several days and demanded the resignation of the energy minister.
The outages stopped in mid-May and Mr. Luque, who is also acting energy minister, said on June 7 that the risk of power outages had been mitigated. But this assurance was short-lived.
On June 16, parts of Quito were plunged into darkness again. Three days later, a power outage hits the entire country.
Car horns and screams from drivers filled the streets of Quito and the port city of Guayaquil on Wednesday evening as traffic lights stopped working and vehicles overwhelmed city streets. Public transportation systems and some water companies suspended services in the two major cities.
The Mayor of Quito expressed his surprise on that the outage had affected the city’s subway system, which uses an “isolated” power source.
“The event must be very important to have even affected the power supply of the Quito metro,” he wrote.
Wednesday at 6:50 p.m., Mr. Luque written the that 90 percent of electricity had been restored, and he blamed the “energy crisis” on years of lack of public investment.
“Today we are suffering the consequences,” he said.
Thalie Ponce contributed reporting from Guayaquil, Ecuador.
