In 8 days, there were more than 1.2 million interruptions. The regulatory body has already imposed fines and is studying an “extraordinary sanction” for Edesur.
Since Monday of last week, and for eight consecutive days, power outages once again disturbed homes in Buenos Aires and the suburbs. There were more than 1.2 million customers supplied by Edesur and Edenor that suffered some kind of interruption in the electricity supply in the last 8 days. The summer has not yet started and the lines are already beginning to give alarm signals.
The outlook for January and February is “very complicated”, according to Walter Martello, controller of the national electricity regulator (Enre), which has supervision of the concessions of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA), that is, Edesur and Edenor.
The companies commissioned audits with weather forecasts for the coming months. “All the audits give (a) very complicated scenario,” according to the official. The Enre asked the companies to prepare a “summer” plan, aimed at mitigating the impact of the cuts for these dates. The Enre technicians are checking them. In Edesur they say that they are “weather reports that are always commissioned, but no audit.”
The situation is more complicated in the case of Edesur than in the Edenor network, according to official data. Edesur already had more than 800,000 interruptions in eight days. During the last five days, exceeded 70,000 daily cutss. That amount constitutes a “causal for extraordinary sanction,” according to Martello.
There are certain neighborhoods and geographical areas that tend to be more affected by the cuts. Among them are Caballito and its surrounding areas in the city of Buenos Aires, the districts of San Vicente and Esteban Echeverría in Greater Buenos Aires, plus the town of Glew (Admiral Brown district) in the southern suburbs. All of them are on the Enre board marked as areas where they will do special monitoring.
During the weekend, the Enre had already applied fines for $687 million to Edesur and $293 million to Edenor. The day that Argentina played the Netherlands in the quarterfinals of the World Cup, almost 275,000 homes were left without electricity.
“Taking into account that the replacement times required by the concession contract have been considerably exceeded, the ENRE advises that within a maximum period of 24 hours the distributors Edenor and Edesur must guarantee the normal provision of the service to all persons affected users,” the regulator reported on Sunday.
The companies understand that the electricity rates in Buenos Aires They are 300% behind.
In the government, they sanctioned Edesur and Edenor, but they are more concerned about the southern concessionaire than the northern one. “We ask them to have 100 crews ready. They have 80 contracted, very few of their own. They do not have the capacity to respond to low voltage problems, the fall of a switch. It shows that it is a disinvested company ”, they object in the Executive Branch. “Edesur’s area is not comparable to Edenor’s. In the last three years, Edesur invested more than Edenor,” they answer in that company.
The company has promised a substation – in Glew – which will be ready by the middle of the year. This work could alleviate some of the most difficult points in the southern suburbs, but it will be available after these hot months. “Of the last 20 years, in 18 years there was a breach of contracts, that is why the Glew thing was not done,” they reply in Edesur.
During the cut-off days of the last weekend, the company was emailing even customers who had not reported an outage about service status updates.
“After two weeks of a heat wave and a storm, there was a record consumption. Within this framework, the internal staff and guards were increased. Generators were also put on, and a WhatsApp was enabled for claims, “they answer in Edesur. “There were cuts but not in large areas and specific cases that may have been pending are attended to,” they add.
“The number of outages, the duration of the outages, the availability of crews, in all aspects, Edesur is in a worse situation than Edenor. “The ratio is 4 or 5 to 1 (due to the number of cuts from one to the other),” officials warn. “They dropped from 33 average hours of cuts per customer per year to 11. Obviously there is a lack but there must be clear rules,” is Edesur’s vision.
The Italian group Enel decided to dispose of its assets in Argentina. That includes its generation unit and Edesur, the electricity distributor. The mayors of the suburbs had already requested that the concession of that company be removed during the pandemic, due to the repeated cuts.
Various technicians consulted by Clarion They agree that the Edesur network is deteriorated. From former ministers to officials from different administrations agree that Edesur has not made the investments to avoid cuts. In fact, if a new buyer appears, they will have to make a “heavy” investment in systems.
In the last twenty years, the legal framework for the concessions of electricity distributors has almost never been followed. The companies were only able to apply the comprehensive tariff review – a principle established in the privatizations of those companies, which were previously public – in 2017 and 2018. The rest of the time they were subject to decisions by their regulators.
“The fact that Edesur has made the business decision to sell its position in Argentina does not imply that we must accept that this “withdrawal” is at the expense of users where older adults, people with disabilities and users in general have to suffer this situation,” said Martello. it’s a statement.
“We need a clear and stable regulatory framework.” “There is no defined rule, whatever, on whether the rates follow inflation, the salary level, the INDEC or some mathematical formula that is not a political decision,” explained Claudio Cunha – the Brazilian who is in charge of Edesur – a Clarion at the beginning of the year.