Iraq announces nationwide power outage amid ‘record’ heat

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iraq-announces-nationwide-power-outage-181815545.html

by yahoonews

9 comments

  1. **From AFP:**

    Power was out across Iraq on Monday as scorching summer temperatures pushed electricity grid demand to unprecedented levels, authorities said.

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

    Mitigating the grid interruption was the fact that most households rely on private generators, acquired to compensate for daily power cuts to public electricity.

    The electricity ministry said the grid suffered a “total outage” after two transmission lines were shut down “due to a record rise in temperatures, increased consumer demand, and increased electrical load in the provinces of Babylon and Karbala, which are experiencing an influx of millions of pilgrims” for a major Shiite Muslim religious commemoration.

    The shutdown caused “a sudden and accidental loss of more than 6,000 megawatts on the grid”, the ministry added, with power plants also halting operations.

    “Our teams are currently mobilised on the ground to gradually restore the grid over the next few hours,” the ministry said.

  4. I know it’s pedantic, but the quotes irritate me. Is it record heat or not?

    Sympathies for those people having to live through it. It’s a hard time to be alive.

  8. Overpopulation, climate change, and decades of conflict and underinvestment are a disastrous combination, especially in a inhospitable place like Iraq (which is mostly not fit for human habitation). Afghanistan is suffering from a similar crisis.

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