Summer has begun in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat with several prolonged power outages lasting hours that have affected thousands of residents in the second largest city in Catalonia. In this context, the City Council has held several meetings with Endesa, the company that on Tuesday presented a contingency plan to try to solve the problem.
Read more The EU and the United Kingdom seal the Gibraltar agreement that means the disappearance of the fence
The first major power outage occurred on June 29 and the next day another problem was recorded, affecting 12,886 subscribers according to data collected by LHDigital. This Sunday, another outage deprived 4,756 customers of supply. And although shorter in time, the same situation repeated itself this Monday night to Tuesday morning. According to Endesa, “three significant incidents were recorded between June 29 and July 13.” La Florida, Pubilla Cases, and Collblanc are the most affected neighborhoods, although not the only ones. They are part of an area known as Samontà, which already accumulates many other problems and now the power outages, which are not the first time they have happened, have worsened.
The lament of the residents
Food wasted and demand for breakdowns not to last so long
“The first outage was from two in the afternoon until twelve the next day and the one the day before yesterday from five in the afternoon to one in the morning,” recalls Juan Martín, a resident of Collblanc. “Breakdowns can happen, like everywhere. But what is not logical is that they last so long and especially during the heat wave we are experiencing,” he considers.
David Crespi, another resident of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, was traveling during the first blackout. “My mother had to throw away everything we had in the freezer. There are five of us at home,” he laments. And the second outage, returning from a trip. “We arrived at five and the power went out. We had no food because of the previous blackout. We left the suitcases and went to my mother’s house. I have a one-year-old baby,” he recounts.
Also read
“It’s absurd, someone should be held responsible,” Crespi considers. Some residents have mobilized through social networks to demand solutions and ask the City Council to have protocols ready such as installing shaded tents, distributing sandwiches to those affected, opening air-conditioned public facilities, or prioritizing care for the elderly. They demand that the municipal administration stand by the residents.
The City Council has held several meetings with Endesa. “We have demanded a diagnosis of the entire area,” says the deputy mayor of the Urban Quality area, David Gómez. In addition, the City Council wants “the generators to have crews closer to the municipality to have a faster reaction.” “If, for example, the wiring has to be renewed, the action is not short-term,” argues the councilor. On the other hand, the City Council wants a channel specifically enabled for l’Hospitalet where residents can make their claims.
Immediate diagnosis and infrastructure renewal
For its part, Endesa detailed its contingency plan this Tuesday in a statement. The goal is to “thoroughly analyze the condition of the facilities, reinforce the infrastructure, and improve service reliability.”
Read more Ukraine now targets Russian Azov freighters after months of attacking their refineries
The reaction to these episodes that have angered the residents is divided into two phases. The first will begin “immediately” and consists of a “thorough diagnosis of the medium voltage network and associated transformation centers.” The company explains that it wants to “identify possible invisible deteriorations, check the real condition of the facilities, and detect vulnerable points.” For this, “advanced inspection and analysis tools” will be used.
Also read
In addition, Endesa has publicly committed that “any element that shows an anomaly will be repaired or replaced immediately.”
The second phase of this contingency plan will be carried out, according to Endesa, during the last quarter of this year and will consist of “renewal actions on the sections of the network where incidents have occurred, in the neighborhoods of Collblanc and La Florida.”
Among these works are the “replacement of cables, reinforcement of the infrastructure, and improvement of the network meshing.” The aim is to “increase interconnections between circuits and generate more supply alternatives in case of an incident.” Thus, according to Endesa, it will be possible to “reduce the number of customers affected in case of an incident, reduce restoration time, and decrease the need to deploy generator sets.”
On the other hand, Endesa has reminded that affected customers have a specific email address intended to manage claims and inquiries from l’Hospitalet. “These claims will be analyzed and treated as a priority,” the company said, which has maintained “constant coordination with the City Council” during the crisis, as described.
