|
MoEW striving to solve recurrent blackout problem -- Al-Shuraiaan |
|
Tuesday, 15 June 2010 23:30 |
|
KUWAIT, June 15 (KUNA) -- Kuwait Minister of Electricity and Water Dr. Bader Shibeeb Al-Shuraiaan said Tuesday his ministry stepped up efforts to prevent recurrence of blackout in the current extraordinarily hot summer.
"Temperature in Kuwait has hit a new high on Monday and Tuesday, and the hot wave is expected to continue most probably on Wednesday," the minister told reporters at the National Assembly after a parliamentary session on the power landscape in the country. "This resulted on spurring the power consumption, thus adding strains on the power transformers and the technicians operating them. "We hope that the consumption level will not force resorting to programmed blackouts," the minister said, expecting the hot wave to end next week. "If the temperature kept rising in the holy month of Ramadan (starting in late August) everybody will see painful days," he cautioned. Al-Shuraiaan said he asked for today parliamentary session to brief the MPs on the power problems, affirming his readiness to respond to requests by MPs to debate the problem in the future. "This is the most challenging summer for Kuwait's power system. A breakthrough is unlikely before 2011 when Al-Sabiyya power station goes operational," the minister pointed out. Asked about the repeated fire accidents of power transformers, Al-Shuraiaan said his ministry has a total of 28,000 transformers, 8-10 of which break down on a daily basis. "Therefore, the ratio of such malfunctions to the total number of transformers stand at only one per thousand, which is very low vis-a-vis other neighboring countries," he added. Meanwhile, the Ministry's Assistant Undersecretary for Planning and Training Affairs Dr. Meshaan Al-Utaibi said the ministry was doing its utmost to fix the transformers as fast as possible. "Temperature topped 53 Celsius for the first time in Kuwait in years, which added burdens to the maintenance teams of the ministry," Al-Utaibi said. "Fourteen transformers caught fire since the start of 2011. This had nothing to do with the power generating capacity; the problem resulted mainly from the impact of overheat on cables," he added. - Kuna
|