Our southern hemispheric region has not yet entered the summer season, however, this spring presented days of full heat, for example, with temperatures that reached 42° Celsius in the province of Santiago del Estero during the month of November. This scorching heat increased the consumption of electric power that the country requested.
The Foundation for Electricity Development (Fundelec) announced this Thursday, December 22, that the demand for electric power the month of November reached 11,319.3 gigawatt hours (GWh), with which it registered a year-on-year increase of 7.2%. It was also reported that this increase in demand it occurred in a month with higher temperatures compared to the previous year.
Demand for electric power by residential areas reached 44% of total consumption in the country, in turn, registered a rise of 12% compared to the same month last year. For its part, industry accounted for 28% of total consumption, with an increase of 2.4%. Finally, commercial demand also constituted 28% of the total and increased by 4.5%.
Despite the figures for increases released, it also happened that certain provinces consumed less energy. These jurisdictions are: Misiones, which consumed 25% less; Formosa with a drop of 8%; Corrientes received less than 5%; Santa Cruz with a drop of 4% and, finally, the least drop was in Chaco with 1% less consumption.
Power cuts in AMBA
During the past week, there were more than 1.2 million families supplied by Edesur and Edenor, distribution companies to the south and north of the Buenos Aires suburbs, respectively, that suffered interruptions in the service. Walter Martello, controller of the National Electricity Regulatory Entity (ENRE), mentioned that The coming months, as early as 2023, will face a “very complicated” scenario in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA).
Due to the fact that the Edesur company had more than 800,000 power interruptions during eight days and Edenor, some 70,000 power cuts in five days, different sanctions were applied to both companies. Only on the weekend of December 10 and 11, the ENRE applied fines of 687 million pesos to the southern company and 293 million pesos to the northern one.
