2024-08-05 09:21:38
“It seems to me that this crisis is a very good lesson, it is very good that it came to Vilnius as well, politicians and officials saw it. In the future, we will be better prepared for such events,” said Prof. V. Jankauskas.
According to the professor, until now, a dismissive attitude towards the threat posed by storms prevailed in Lithuania, which is evidenced by the earlier discussions about gaps near electric cables. According to him, it is believed that the danger in Lithuania is lower than in Latvia and Estonia, which have a longer coast.
“Here, we should go back a long way, when there was a discussion about what kind of clearings we would need. Then it was decided that 3 meters would be enough and it was written into the law. “For Latvians, the clearings are twice as big,” he said.
According to V. Jankauskas, Lithuania is too big and sparsely populated for investments in underground electric cables, so the idea could not be implemented pragmatically.
“We can talk about the cities, in the beginning – the big ones, what more or less has been done, but it will never be the case that it will be done in every smallest town. We can talk about these ideas, but at what cost? We see that things are not so simple,” he said.
What would happen if day “X” came?
When the storm hit, many people were without electricity, but also without communication. Under the conditions of peace, such circumstances seem hard to imagine, so the consequences of the natural disaster brought to light another important question – is the preparation for day “X” really going smoothly?
“Not only did we have no electricity, we also had no communication – people couldn’t call each other. I talked to a couple of people, they say, how do we prepare if there is a bigger storm and such a catastrophe?
Many also complained about the way ESO communicated. The message we all probably got to buy generators is that I understand that some rich businessman with a lot of stuff needs one, but what about the average person? He needs that generator maybe once every three years,” the professor added.
V. Jankauskas agrees with the politicians’ thoughts on the need for ESO to purchase generators that could be used by residents in the event that they are left without electricity supply, but adds that in managing similar crises that affect the entire country’s population, one would also expect a response from the army and riflemen.
“If it is really seen that such a big crisis is looming, it is necessary to mobilize other forces that could participate”, the expert shared his thoughts.
It is true that the contribution of individual settlements cannot be underestimated – as V. Jankauskas notes, after building their own wind or solar power plants, they become energetically self-sufficient and independent from the general system.
“We are going in that direction and will continue. This is very important not only in the event of a storm, but also in case of a really big conflict”, observed V. Jankauskas.
Without electricity – another 400 consumers
The “Energy Distribution Operator” (ESO), which is engaged in maintenance of networks, announces that on the morning of Monday, August 5, due to direct losses caused by the storm that broke out at the beginning of last week, about 400 consumers still do not have electricity.
As ESO representative Rasa Juodkienė emphasized, it takes time to deal with faults, because, unlike after previous storms, when fuses or other quickly replaceable technical parts blew, this time the storm cut off power lines in many places.
“There are a lot of such users. If we identify an outage, it happens that we go to fix it and we see that there is not one violation, but three or four in the section where the electricity should come to the consumers’ homes,” R. Juodkienė told the “Elta” news agency on Monday.
According to ESO data, there are currently also about 300 customers who are supplied with low-quality electricity (one phase is missing) after the storm. There are also about 200 customers who do not have a smart metering system, so ESO employees have to go to their homes and check whether electricity has been restored to such residents.
“We cannot follow the map displayed on the disturbance map, because it also displays newly appeared customer requests, which are not related to the storm and its consequences”, says R. Juodkienė.
According to ESO, the number of customers without electricity increased slightly on Monday, as some of the new reports were received over the weekend from gardens, homesteads, etc. There are also some difficult cases left.
The ELTA news agency reminds that after the storm that broke out a week ago, after the restoration of electricity supply was delayed and some consumers suffered losses as a result, ESO made a decision to pay compensation to some residents. It will be provided for more than 72 hours. for persons who did not have electricity.
2024-08-05 09:21:38