The Electricity of Lebanon announced that the electric current will be cut off of the areas covered by the Aley station on June 8th, for several hours.
The institution issued a statement on Friday, June 5th, to inform people in these areas of the planned outage. The main station of Aley (66kV) will be completely isolated on Monday, from 8 A.M until 4 P.M.
The Electricity of Lebanon stated that it will isolate said station in order to qualify the two medium-tension line exits of Ain El Jdideh and Baalashmayh at the station.
Aside from this planned outage, electricity uptimes have been very inconsistent in many Lebanese areas recently. The past weeks saw several protests by Lebanese citizens against the unfair power rationing.
The outages coincided with a surge in the temperature, which made them even more unbearable for the people affected by them in the capital and other cities and towns.
The excessive power cuts were the result of a shortage of fuel and fuel oil, the two combustibles necessary to maintain a steady coverage of electric power.
There had been two ships transporting these substances to Lebanon docked in Lebanese waters for weeks. However, they were not authorized to unload their shipments because of a financial hold imposed on them by the foreign banks used by the supplier.
Eventually, late May, the Electricity of Lebanon announced that the hold was finally lifted and the electric current would gradually start to come back to its normal routine.
But this “stability” seems to be short-lived. As it seems, the Caesar Act, which recently became one of the biggest talks in the Lebanese political scene, may prove damaging to Lebanon’s readily-insufficient electricity imports.
On a side note, speaking of fuel shortages, the Lebanese telecommunications operator, Touch, has recently been running on fumes due to a severe lack of diesel fuel in its stations’ reserves.
