A plan has been drawn up to reduce the periods of power outages during summer, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced in a press conference on 25 June.
The government has been applying an intermittent power cut system across Egypt for over a year now, to compensate for shortages in fuel used to operate power stations. It had announced a schedule to organise the outages according to the power consumed in various locations in the country. Power cuts aiming at reducing loads had started at one hour a day, then was raised to two hours a day. This week’s heat wave led to increased use of air conditioners and thus placed added loads on the electricity grid; the accordingly government decided to add an extra hour to the daily power cuts. Yet owing to a technical problem in a major power station that supplies the Egyptian grid, power cuts in some locations reached six hours on 24 June.
Hence Mr Madbouly’s press conference of 25 June to explain the situation and announce measures that the government will take to tackle the problem.
The Prime Minister explained that the month of June witnessed three heat waves; he said that owing to the high temperatures, electricity consumption on Monday touched on 36 gigabytes. On the other hand, he explained that Egypt stopped exporting electricity three years ago due to the increasing volume of consumption.
During the press conference, Mr Madbouly announced what he called “urgent decisions” to resolve the crisis once and for all. He said the government will immediately draw new contracts to import petroleum products to fuel power stations, with diesel shipments to arriving to Egypt early next week. The government will provide USD1 billion to overcome the power outage crisis during summer, he said, and strategic reserves of diesel will be raised by 300,000 tons, worth USD180 million.
As of 1 July, the PM said, shops and shopping malls should close at 10 pm to rationalise the power consumption.
As of the third week of July, he said, the government will stop the intermittent power cut plan until the end of the summer.