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LATIN AMERICA |
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Ecuador Aims to End Power Rationing Before
Christmas
QUITO – The Ecuadorian government expects to
end power rationing before the coming
holiday season, a member of the team dealing
with acute electricity shortages said
Tuesday.
“The objective we have set in the crisis
Cabinet is, before the Christmas holidays,
not to have power cuts in any part of the
country,” Diego Borja, Ecuador’s minister
for coordination of economic policy, said in
an interview with Radio Quito.
Ecuadorians have been living with daily
programmed blackouts since Nov. 5 due to
persistent drought in the area around the
hydroelectric plant that normally supplies
40 percent of the Andean nation’s power.
The reservoir at the Paute River dam is 20
meters (65 feet) below optimal levels and
only two of the plant’s 10 turbines are
currently functioning.
Paute can supply up to 20,000 MW per hour
under normal conditions, but current output
is just 4,000-5,000 MW per hour.
Borja highlighted the steps taken by the
government to ease the crisis, such as the
purchase of an extra 5,200 MW per hour of
electricity from neighbors Peru and
Colombia.
He also stressed the “enormous investments
in electricity” made by President Rafael
Correa’s government since taking office in
early 2007.
“Technical experts say that in a country
such as Ecuador, where there is a great
number of hydroelectric sources, a good part
of (power) generation can be hydroelectric,”
Borja said, citing a figure of 70 percent.
“But the rest has to be thermoelectric and
we have in Ecuador 30 years of abandonment
of the thermoelectric (plants),” the
minister said.
“Despite the government’s enormous
investments, the biggest in recent times, it
has not been possible to have all the
resources to replace all the thermoelectric
equipment,” Borja told Radio Quito. EFE |
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