Government reduces power to 860 more businesses as conditions deteriorate at major power plants

Energy Minister Juan Carlos Blum on Friday ordered 860 medium-size companies disconnected from the national power grid one day a week beginning September 28. On Monday, the country’s 185 largest energy users were disconnected for 24 hours.

Energy Minister Juan Carlos Blum said Friday that residential customers are a priority in avoiding electric blackouts.

Blum said the new restrictions are required because of “worse than expected situations” at the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant in Napo Province and at the three generation stations at the Mazar complex near Cuenca. “Because of low rainfall at Coca Codo Sinclair we are producing less energy than expected,” he said, adding that the drop in water level at the Mazar reservoir was occurring at a rate “faster than expected.”

The Energy Ministry said the one-day-a-week suspensions for large power consumers will remain in place until further notice and could be extended to additional days if conditions worsen.

In a Friday afternoon interview on Teleamazonas, Blum urged local governments to reduce night lighting and that football games and concerts be rescheduled to daytime hours. “It’s not the time to light parks and city streets at night and not the time to schedule football championships at night,” Blum said. “If the industrial sector is making a sacrifice for the country, local governments and citizens must also do their part.”

Blum said the Energy Ministry is launching an “energy efficiency campaign” to encourage households to reduce electric consumption. “If households start to use energy more intelligently and more efficiently, we can save up to 11 megawatt hours a day, which is equivalent to the savings in the industrial and business sectors,” the minister said.

Estimating the strength and duration of drought conditions in the area where Mazar and Coca Codo Sinclair are located is impossible, Blum said. “No one can predict the impact of the El Niño phenomenon that is just beginning,” he said. “We do not know when we will receive the rainfall to improve electric generation. What we can guarantee is that we are doing everything we can to manage the system in the most responsible way.”

He said Ecuador’s residential customers are the priority. “More sacrifices may be necessary but we are putting households first.”

When asked if he could guarantee that there would be no blackouts, Blum said: “all our efforts are focused on avoiding such a scenario.”

At 11 a.m. Saturday, the level of the Mazar reservoir stood at 2,134 meters above sea level, the lowest level of the year and a decline of 19 meters since August 18. The level is 19 meters above the minimum operating level for the three generating plants in the complex.