Iraq electricity gradually back after nationwide outage

BAGHDAD - Electricity supply returned to all Iraq’s provinces on Aug 12, a government official told AFP, expecting the grid’s full recovery within a day after a nationwide power outage.

Electricity shortages are a frequent complaint in Iraq, suffering from endemic corruption and dilapidated public infrastructure.

Most households rely on private generators, acquired to compensate for daily power cuts to public electricity.

On Aug 11, the electricity ministry said that “a record rise in temperatures” coupled with a surge in demand resulted in the shutdown of transmission lines, which then led to a total outage.

A senior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP on Aug 12 that “since midnight, all provinces have seen the return” of power supply.

The official cautioned that “it is happening gradually”, with the central province of Karbala, where millions of Shi’ite Muslim pilgrims were expected for a major religious commemoration, being “the first to recover its electricity”.

In the capital Baghdad, the grid was back to 95 per cent of its normal capacity, said the official.

The outage came amid a heatwave that Iraqi meteorological services expect to last more than a week, with temperatures climbing as high as 50 deg C in parts of the country.

While the vast majority of Iraqis rely on private generators, they often cannot power all household appliances, especially air conditioners.

Iraq is sometimes rocked by protests when outages worsen in the hot summer months.

To avoid outages during peak demand, Iraq would need to produce around 55,000MW of electricity.

In August, for the first time, the country’s power plants reached the 28,000MW threshold.

The electricity ministry official said that “the system has returned to normal and is stable”, producing 24,000MW and expected to reach 27,000MW once the final malfunctions related to the outage on Aug 11 are resolved. AFP