Ecuador cuts power as heavy rains hurt hydro

Ecuador restarted daily two-hour power outages this week across the country because of issues in the 1.5GW Coca-Codo Sinclaire, 156MW Agoyan and 230MW San Francisco hydroelectric plants.

Heavy rainfalls near Coca-Codo Sinclair have increased sediments in the Coca river that feeds the plant, forcing six of its eight turbines out of operation. The plant is the largest generator in the country and is in the provinces of Napo and Sucumbios, in the northeast of the country.

In addition, Agoyan's engine house flooded also because of the massive rainfalls and landslides in the central highlands of the country where the plant is located. And the San Francisco plant, downstream of Agoyan, stopped generating as well because it uses the same water supply as Agoyan.

Ecuador has lost about 1.5GW-1.9GW of power capacity in recent days because of these issues and 400MW of power capacity available for imports from its northern neighbor Colombia were not enough to prevent the need for rolling outages.

The energy ministry will update its plans for outages this week based on the status of the three hydroelectric plants.

Ecuador implemented 2–8-hour blackouts for 12 days from 16-30 April because of a lack of rain in the main hydroelectric plants after dry conditions also led to 35 days of blackouts from October-December 2023.

By Alberto Araujo