Ecuador orders a series of power outages due to drought

The government of Ecuador announced late Monday that it would implement eight-hour power cuts every night across the Andean nation next week. It cited a severe dry spell which had caused water levels in hydroelectric plants to plummet.

The government of Ecuador has declared a power shortage, which it attributes to the lack of maintenance on existing dams, the failure to sign contracts for new power generation and the worst drought the country has experienced in 61 years.

The government announced in a blog post on X that power cuts would begin on September 23 at 10:00 p.m. local and last until 6:00 a.m. on the following day. It added that the measure would be repeated on Wednesday, Thursday and Tuesday.

The number of weeks for which the power cuts were to be implemented was not known.

The post stated that "the established cut-off time has been selected to generate the least impact possible on productive activities and development of working hours."

This measure comes in addition to the scheduled power outage on Wednesday, for maintenance of all transmission and distribution systems across the country.

The statement said that the government had taken a number of measures to combat the crisis. These included commissioning a powership and attempting to build generators permanently on land.

According to the authorities, Ecuador requires 1,000 megawatts (or one gigawatt) of additional power to meet its national needs. Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Oliver Griffin, editing by David Evans

(source: Reuters)