The strike of EDF agents continues in Guadeloupe. New power outages occurred on Thursday, depriving tens of thousands of homes of electricity, the archipelago’s grid manager said.
“At the height of the event, 71,000 customers were affected” by the deprivation of electricity due to the social movement in the Albioma power plant located in the municipality of Moule, EDF Archipel Guadeloupe, network manager in the archipelago, said in a press release.
The outages began around 2pm local time (1800 GMT) in several municipalities, including Pointe-à-Pitre and Sainte-Anne. The strike at EDF – Insular Electric Production (PEI), the local electricity production branch of EDF, announced by the energy branch of the Overseas CGT, will last until Monday morning.
Dependence on thermal energy
The social movement, which has lasted since September 15, concerns the implementation of an agreement signed at the beginning of 2023, after two months of strike by the same agents, who demanded compliance with their contracts and their remuneration with the law, including the I work five years of unpaid back wages. It has since caused power outages affecting up to 100,000 homes.
Guadeloupe is a non-interconnected area, which means it must produce its own electricity to meet the territory’s demand. Its electricity production depends for almost 70% on thermal energy: diesel for EDF and wood pellets for the Albioma company which until July still ran on coal. The Albioma thermoelectric power plant covers approximately 30% of the archipelago’s electricity production.
Every shutdown of the engine of one of these two power plants causes an imbalance on the network between electricity supply and demand, forcing the operator EDF Archipel Guadeloupe to carry out load shedding to avoid any “black out”.
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