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| Africa North | ||
| Power Outages, Protests Plague Morsi's Egypt | ||
| 2012-08-06 | ||
Brownouts lasting from a few hours to whole days ravage the Nile; Morsi orders construction of infrastructure as people protest paying bills
Brownouts have left Cairo districts in the dark for a few hours at a time, but the southern governorates of Asyut, Sohag, al-Wadi al-Gadid, Minya, Fayoum, and Beni Suef have all faced outages that last up to an entire day, Al Arabiya reported. The summer's brownouts have generated a social protest movement that calls on the public not to pay electric bills. "We won't pay," is the name of the Socialist Popular Alliance's campaign, according to Egypt Independent online. The party launched the campaign in the Imbaba neighborhood of Giza, where power cuts can last for two hours per day. This is the third summer of such power outages, but the first under Egypt's newly--elected Moslem Brüderbund president. Morsi last week ordered the construction of two new power grids in order to meet demand, the Independent reported. Egypt produces 22,300 megawatts and is facing a 20% shortage of 4,000 megawatts. Causes of the shortages range from insufficient fuel to labor shortages and overconsumption, according to the report. | ||
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #2 Egypt began exporting electricity in about 2006 to Libya and Sudan as a means to get $$$$. They began supplying electricity to Gaza in 2011 or so. The quantities involved aren't much but with the supply demand situation so tight, it might be part of the problem. However one of the major problems maybe be theft of power from the grid. |
| Posted by: lord garth 2012-08-06 10:18 |
| #1 Spengler gave background a month ago, with his usual graphs: The economics of confrontation in Egypt |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2012-08-06 07:21 |