Ecuador was left without electricity this Wednesday due to a failure in the power transmission systemaccording to the Minister of Energy of that country, Roberto Luque.
“The immediate report that we received is that there is a failure in the transmission line that caused a cascade disconnectionso there is no energy service to national scale“wrote the government official of Daniel Noboa in a brief message.
The blackout affects important cities such as Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca and Manta.
The surprising power outage occurred two days later that the Government ruled out the possibility of blackouts, after the Coca-Codo-Sinclair hydroelectric plant came out of operationthe most important generator in the country.
The shutdown of that plant’s system was due to the danger that it could suffer damage due to the increase in the amount of sediment in the flows of the rivers that feed it, due to the heavy rains.
Minister Luque did not specify, however, the causes of this massive blackout and assured that the authorities are focusing their efforts on solving the problem as quickly as possible.
“We are concentrating all our efforts to resolve the problem as quickly as possible,” Luque remarked in his X account.
Furthermore, the minister had warned that there was a similar danger in the Agoyán and San Francisco hydroelectric plantsalso due to the effects of intense rains, so the country had stopped generating 2,145 megawatts of energy.
The problem was reported by users after three in the afternoon and immediately the complaints began to be replicated in different cities of the country.
Furthermore, the lack of energy brought a traffic chaos on important central avenues and even merchants had to close their doors when they saw that the service was not normalized as soon as possible.
The nationwide blackout The metro system – the subte – collapsed in Quitoforcing passengers to walk through the tunnels in the dark.
The Metropolitan Transit Agency (AMT) reported that the lack of electricity affects 1,027 intersections in the city. “580 agents work in traffic management throughout the city,” the entity added.
There are also complaints because there are Telephone and Internet signal failures.
The Government of Ecuador had ruled out blackouts
After the Coca-Codo-Sinclair hydroelectric plant, the most important generator in Ecuador, stopped working due to the possible damage it could suffer due to the accumulation of sediment after the intense rains, the Government came out to rule out the possibility of blackouts.
Despite this, Minister Luque had warned that there was a similar danger in the state of the Agoyán and San Francisco hydroelectric plants, also due to the effects of the intense rains, so The country had stopped generating 2,145 megawatts of energy.
Ecuador suffered scheduled blackouts of up to 13 hours in April passed due to a prolonged drought that reduced reservoirs to a minimum.
The controlled cuts ended in May with the return of the rains.
