The heat wave that is being experienced in the Federal Capital and Greater Buenos Aires during this first fortnight of February has caused cuts in different points of the AMBA. Faced with this panorama, some clarifications made by Enel Argentinathe company that manages the shares of Edesur.
In the first instance, the company highlighted an advance in the quality of the service, which allowed it to reduce the SAIDI: the average interruption per user in a certain period. Particularly, in January 2023, the reported figure was 87 minutes, which represents a decrease compared to the numbers for this month in 2022 (236) and 2021 (122).
Likewise, Enel Argentina reported that it has also managed to lower the levels of commercial claims: The amount that the company currently reports is about half of what it used to receive in pre-pandemic times.
From the high temperatures of the first days of February, on Friday the 10th there was a historical record in electricity demand: 4,181 megawatts (MW) was reached at 1:45 p.m. Nine minutes later, the operator of the high-voltage system of Greater Buenos Aires (SACME), asked Edesur to make cuts to customers, after detecting that power generation for the southern zone was insufficient.
As a consequence of this, the service was interrupted preventively to some 180,000 homes, which is equivalent to 250 MW, between 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.. 70% were normalized at 4:00 p.m. establishments due to the heat wave and the situation returned to normal at nightfall.
On the other hand, from Edesur they point out that the company was forced to increase field resources by 40% and install more than 20 generator sets in different areas of the network to minimize the affectations.
Another aspect that stands out from the firm is that one of the power generators in the southern zone is Central Dock Southan entity that Enel manages together with other shareholders, and which has a combined cycle of almost 800 MW (3.2 times what was missing on the day the demand record was reached).
At this plant, the organization is carrying out modernization work that requires an investment of more than 110 million dollars. This will allow the addition of almost 90 MW of power to the system, greater efficiency and significant improvements at the environmental level.
This project, which had started in 2021, began the disassembly and reassembly of the machines in October 2022 and is in its final stage. With which, the country will have access to a advanced power generation In the next weeks.
On the other hand, in the last three years, Enel Argentina has invested 665 million dollars, of which 456 million were allocated to Edesur, despite the rate delays and contractual breaches observed during this period.
In this sense, on Monday, February 6, the ENRE controller announced that a resolution will be issued with the new values. Once it is published, the financial sustainability can be evaluated so that the company can operate in the context of quality that customers need.
It should be remembered that Edesur has been operating without paying dividends for two decades, except for the 13 million dollars in 2009. In this context, 100% of the company’s income was directed to the operation, and in 2019, Enel injected 100 million dollars to be able to finance the investment plan. All this, with the aim of offering an increasingly better service to its users.
