Blackouts increase to eight hours next week and possibly longer in coming weeks; Cuenca gets a break

Energy Minister Inés Manzano announced Friday morning that power blackouts will increase to eight hours a day on Sunday, up from the current six hours. “Unfortunately, drought conditions affecting our hydroelectric generation do not allow us to maintain the six-hour blackout schedule,” she said.

Energy Minister Inés Manzano

In an interview with Ecuavisa, Manzano said dropping water levels on the Rio Coca near the Coca Coda Sinclair hydroelectric and at the three plants at the Mazar reservoir, have forced the blackout extensions. “Until we receive additional rainfall, our largest power plants do not have water levels sufficient to maintain the current level of production,” she said. “Light or moderate rain is forecast for the weekend, but dry weather is expected to return on Monday.”

Manzano said eight-hour blackouts will continue until Thursday, November 14, when a new schedule will be announced. She called weather conditions “dynamic” and said blackouts could be increased or reduced next week, based on rainfall. “We had enjoyed a period of several days when increased flow of Rio Coca allowed us to increase generation at Coca Coda Sinclair but production has fallen off in recent days.”

She added that the reservoir level at Mazar is falling again after rising for several days. She called the three power plants at Mazar the “backbone” of Ecuador’s hydroelectric power generation but said they cannot function properly at current water levels.

The Energy Ministry issued a statement following Manzano’s interview, noting that much of Cuenca will be spared blackouts for most of next week because of the Ibero-American Summit. The summit is the annual gathering of leaders of Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

In another Ecuavia interview following Manzano’s announcement, Andrés Oquendo, former president of the Ecuador College of Electrical Engineers, said that eight-hour blackouts are “far too short” of what is required to protect the power grid. “They should be at least 12 hours and probably 14 or 15,” he said, claiming that the decision to put two power plants at Mazar into operation last week was a mistake. “The water level was rising at the reservoir and because the ministry decided to put its turbines back into operation, it is again dropping rapidly,” he said. “We should have made the hard decision to increase power outages so Mazar could recover.”

Without heavy rainfall, Oquendo said the eight-hour blackouts will “put additional stress” on the system, requiring much longer blackouts in the coming weeks.