2024-05-02 16:15:09
ENERGY
The resumption of energy purchases from Colombia, according to Minister Luque, will allow shorter and standardized power outage schedules between Tuesday and Thursday of this week. Likewise, it is expected that blackouts will be suspended during Friday, Saturday and Sunday, that is, during the next Labor Day holiday.
«Today we have good news. After several conversations, we have reactivated the interconnection with Colombia and it has decided to sell us energy,” according to Roberto Luque, Minister of Energy and Mines in charge, during the press conference on the electricity crisis this April 29, 2024, the resumption of purchases of energy from Colombia allows the electricity deficit in Ecuador to drop from 10.4 to 4.2 Gigawatts/hour.
“This implies that with a 4.2 Gigawatt hour deficit, the cuts for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are going to be much smaller and possibly standardized, which was one of the requests we had,” said Luque.
The minister assured that the duration of the blackout times would be similar to those recorded in November 2023. In addition, Luque assured that “it is most likely that we will not have outages on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.” “That is the objective that we are going to achieve with the purchase of 6 Gigawatts/hour from Colombia.”
The president of that neighboring country, Gustavo Petro, surprised, during the morning of this April 29, he had already surprised with a message on his X account. «Making technical reviews we are about to sell energy to Ecuador again and help to solve their rationing problems (power outages),” he pointed out.
Along with the purchases in Colombia, which alleviate the electricity crisis, work is also being done to have greater flows in the Paute and Mazar hydroelectric plants.