A power blackout affected the whole of Ecuador Wednesday (June 19), which left the whole country and its 18 million people without power.
Bloomberg quoted Quito mayor Pabel Muñoz, who said that the capital's subway, which has its own independent backup power supply, also stopped running.
CNN added that hospitals were also affected by the blackout and had to rely on generators to maintain operations.
Ecuadorian energy minister Roberto Luque posted on X, formerly Twitter, saying that the outage was due to an incident with a transmission line that triggered a "cascading disconnection." He added that efforts were being taken to restore power to the country "as soon as possible."
El reporte inmediato que nos llegó de CENACE es que existe una falla en la línea de transmisión que ocasionó una desconexión en cascada, por lo que no hay servicio energético a escala nacional.
— Roberto Luque (@RobertoLuqueN) June 19, 2024
Estamos concentrando todos nuestros esfuerzos en resolver el problema lo más rápido.
Time reported that at around 19:00 local time (00:00 UTC), 95% of power service was restored, with full power service expected to resume before midnight (05:00 UTC).
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Ecuador's Energy Problem
The country has been suffering multiple incidents of blackouts since early this year, which was exacerbated by severe drought.
Luque told reporters that the blackout was the first of its kind in 20 years, which also showed how "fragile" the country's power grid is and how it reflected the energy crisis being experienced.
Despite heavy rains compensating for water loss in recent days, it did force the disconnection of Ecuador's largest hydroelectric plant due to the risk of erosion.
This, in turn, led private pipeline operator Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados Ecuador to shut down its pipeline, also due to erosion risks.
The BBC added that most of Ecuador's energy came from neighboring Colombia.
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