Ecuador was plunged into a nationwide blackout Wednesday afternoon, and the country’s public works minister blamed the emergency on the failure of a key transmission line.
The minister, Roberto Luque, said in a statement to X that he received a report from the national electricity operator, CENACE, about “a fault in the transmission line that caused a successive disconnection, so there is no energy service throughout the country.”
He said authorities were working to resolve the outage “as soon as possible.” Within hours, power had begun to return to some areas of Quito, the capital.
The South American country of 18 million people has been struggling with an energy crisis for several years. Failing infrastructure, lack of maintenance and reliance on imported power all contributed to blackouts – though none were as widespread as this one.
Around 15:15 on Wednesday, the majority of Ecuadorians found themselves without power.
Most of the country’s energy comes from neighboring Colombia, a nation that has struggled to produce enough energy for its own domestic consumption.
A $2.25 billion hydroelectric plant built by China, the Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, was supposed to help solve Ecuador’s problem. Located on the Coca River in Napo Province, 62 miles east of Quito, it is the largest energy project in Ecuador.
Instead, the project has become a major headache for the Ecuadorian authorities. There were several manufacturing errors that led to a legal dispute between Ecuadorian officials and the Chinese company.
The country woke up to widespread blackouts in April, which the energy ministry attributed to historically low water flows following a prolonged drought, rising temperatures and a lack of maintenance on the country’s electricity system.
For weeks afterward, the ministry imposed daily blackouts lasting several hours. President Daniel Noboa declared an energy emergency, ordered businesses and government offices to close for several days and called for the resignation of the energy minister.
The blackouts stopped in mid-May and Mr Luke, who is also acting energy minister, said on June 7 that the risk of blackouts had eased. But this assurance was short-lived.
On June 16, parts of Quito were again plunged into darkness. Three days later, a blackout hit the entire country.
On Wednesday afternoon, the sound of honking cars and shouting drivers filled the streets of Quito and the port city of Guayaquil as traffic lights stopped working and vehicles flooded the city streets. Public transport systems and some water companies suspended services in both major cities.
Quito’s mayor expressed surprise to X that the blackout had affected the city’s subway system, which uses an “isolated” power source.
“The event must be very important to have even affected the power in the Quito metro,” he wrote.
At 6:50 p.m. on Wednesday, Mr Luke wrote to X that 90 per cent of power had been restored and blamed years of a lack of public investment for the “energy crisis”.
“Today we are living the consequences,” he said.
Thalie Ponce contributed reporting from Guayaquil, Ecuador.
