“We have met again with CGE to demand a response backed by concrete actions to these prolonged power outages that leave more than 7,000 homes without the necessary supply in our region.” This was reported by the Presidential Delegate of O’Higgins, Fabio López Aguilera, after a meeting with the regional manager of the General Electricity Company (CGE), Mariano Morales Ferrada.
During the meeting, which took place early today, the Delegate stressed that “before, during and after this unfortunate episode we have been meeting with CGE management and we have just left a new meeting to demand a prompt solution. We hope that this time CGE will fulfil its commitments. However, we continue to work, coordinate and monitor the progress of the reconnection of so many clients who are still without their electricity supply. Today we are addressing the progress and commitments that the company has made, not only with us, but also with the citizens to have their supply restored promptly.”
The Delegate added that “after this meeting, the regional energy authorities together with the company will visit some points to see how the progress is going.”
In response, Manager Mariano Morales explained that “CGE is working hard to restore power to affected customers. We know that the number of hours without power has been a very complex issue, but the event on Friday morning was experienced with a peak of more than 300 thousand interrupted customers, close to 500 points of failure, and a very significant number of brigades were needed to respond. However, we have deployed brigades from different areas of the country to provide a solution here.”
Regarding CGE’s commitment, the company’s regional manager explained that “we are in coordination with the delegate, seremi and SEC, addressing the importance of prioritizing certain points and incorporating generation to teams that need it. We are committed to the task, with teams deployed in all the communes of the region and with the expectation of restoring a large part of the service today and a small part tomorrow. But I want to emphasize that of the more than 7,000 clients currently affected, some problems are due to daily failures such as pole collisions, among others, but we will attend to them all.”
Regarding this, the regional secretary of Energy, Claudio Martínez, stated that “we will be almost a week in and we have been monitoring the commitments that have often not been fulfilled by CGE and for this reason we have provided professionals from the Ministry of Energy, in addition to support from the Superintendency of Electricity and Fuel, to verify where the crews are, to verify where the repairs are being made.”
In addition, Claudio Martínez indicated, “the Superintendency of Electricity and Fuel provided professionals from the Maule region to support Chimbarongo, San Fernando and Placilla, who were reviewing yesterday and handing in a report. All this information that we are gathering could lead to the formulation of charges that the Superintendency will probably have to analyze.”
For his part, the regional director of the Superintendency, Felipe Lerzundi, highlighted that “there are 7,140 clients who are without power today in the O’Higgins region, of which more than 3,000 correspond to a time of more than 84 hours, concentrated mainly in the communes of Requínoa, Rancagua, Rengo and Olivar, among others. As a Superintendency, we have been carrying out inspection actions deployed on the ground since Friday, with reinforced teams inspecting the restitution points. We will be deployed until normal electrical service is restored in the O’Higgins region.”
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