The new energy minister confirmed that no efforts are being made to increase electricity production during the dry season in the Amazon. The authorities’ call on the way out to the companies submitting bids for the supply of gas to the TermoMachala thermal power plant did not receive a response. The strategy for now is to reduce demand: for companies to consume less and expose home users to power outages. If the dry season continues in the Ecuadorian Amazon and in the regions where Colombia has its hydroelectric plants, we will have power outages from October to March. The whole semester in semi-darkness.

The industrial sector proposes to reduce the electricity demand of some companies in December in order to achieve an effect similar to its own production

This is an announced crisis. On May 1, 2022, we warned in this column: “We are exposing ourselves to the risk of power outages, and electricity is expensive because we have to pay for inefficiency and corruption”, and then our text from May 7 of this year was titled “Will we have power outages in October?”

Minister of Energy, Andrea Arrobo: We do not have an end date for the blackout

This year has been lost and we must work hard to prevent a repeat of the half-baked semester from next October. For starters, don’t sell power to Colombia until the last minute and face the dry season with empty tanks. For the next year, hire floating power plants and resolve the environmental permit on time. Allow private companies to invest to be self-sufficient and even sell into an interconnected system; not to force them to supply the system with what they generate themselves and then suffer rationing.

(…) they supply when there are heavy rains in the Amazon, but they are not enough from October to March.

The second front is solving hydroelectric problems: almost all Correato power plants show failures: Coca-Codo Sinclair has thousands of cracks that continue to reproduce due to the poor quality of the materials used in the construction and the sliding of the banks of the Coca River upstream, the plant threatens the water intake of the dam. The turbine at the Sopladora plant on the Paute River had to be taken out of service because poor quality nuts were used in its assembly and they break. These hydroelectric plants provide electricity when there is abundant rain in the Amazon, from April to September, but not enough from October to March.

Coca Codo Sinclair hits generational record despite lows, Celec reports

On the Coast, where the rains fall precisely from October to March, there are not enough hydroelectric plants, and Toachi-Pilatón, whose construction was contracted in 2010, is not yet completed and already requires repairs.

Diesel plants on the Coast are outdated and also damaged due to lack of maintenance. They must be replaced, but with gas units. First, in El Oro, Correato harassed the company that produced gas from the Amistad field and generated electricity in TermoMachala. EDC left and with Petroecuador production fell. TermoMachala produces with a fraction of its capacity due to a lack of gas, which cannot be imported either, as the power plant does not have a terminal. Other units that were purchased but never installed must be assembled together with TermoMachal and a gas import and export terminal built. Gas exploration concession in the Gulf of Guayaquil, not only in Amistad. Set up factories in Monteverde, which has a gas import port.

The Minister of Energy met with industrialists to coordinate their own production of electricity from the private sector

In the long term, solar and wind farms have already been approved, and the Cardenillo and Santiago hydroelectric projects must be launched. (OR)