Every effort will be made to ensure there are no power cuts during the night, said Energy Minister Michalis Damianos on Thursday, while expressing his confidence that, with the installation of 120-megawatt storage units in January 2027, these problems will not arise next summer.
Speaking to journalists upon his arrival at the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) headquarters for a presentation of the report on the work of the organisation’s Board of Directors.
?sked about the power cuts, the Minister stated that it appeared there had been a fault with the EAC’s generators, which resulted in the need for some power cuts last night.
‘As the operator has also said, we have over 1,000 megawatts of conventional generation and over 1,000 megawatts of generation from solar panels, which means there is no supply problem during the day,’ he noted.
He added that the problem of supply adequacy arises in the early hours of the night, when temperatures remain high but there is no generation from photovoltaic systems. ‘This is something that can only be resolved by storing solar energy, some of which is lost during the day,’ he said, adding that the operator has awarded the contract for 120-megawatt storage units.
‘They will be in Cyprus in January 2027 and will certainly be installed before the summer of 2027, so that we do not face these problems next summer,’ he added.
He said that EAC staff ‘have gone above and beyond to ensure that these cuts are kept to the absolute minimum. We need to be a little patient. People are certainly suffering, and they shouldn’t have to.’
‘It is a problem that should have been resolved by now. We are doing everything we can,’ he added.
Asked whether further power cuts were expected, the Minister said he could not know whether there would be any further faults at the EAC, and that the only person who could predict this was the operator managing the system ‘and certainly does so in such a way that, should any disruption occur, it lasts only a few minutes so as not to inconvenience the public’.
He noted that temperatures are high today and look set to fall tomorrow. ‘We’ll see how things go during the day and do everything possible to ensure there are no power cuts overnight,’ he added.
Asked about energy storage, who is responsible for the fact that we face the same situation every year, and why the public are not informed about which areas will experience power cuts, Damianos stated that the EAC itself should provide this information, and that the operator is proceeding with the 120 megawatts ‘so that we do not have these problems next summer’. He also said that a limit of up to 150 megawatts has been set for private storage, ‘so we believe that part of these megawatts will be part of our energy mix by next summer’.
‘By now, obviously, part of this problem should have been resolved. Whether we could have brought the storage facilities online more quickly is something we need to look into. It is something we are working towards,’ he added.
Asked whether responsibility should be assigned for the situation, given that the same thing happened last year, the Minister said he was not in a position to say who was responsible or how that responsibility would be assigned. ‘Everyone has their own part to play in the country’s energy security. We are handling the political side of this issue. The technical aspects are already in the hands of the experts. We are doing everything we can to ensure we have this security of supply next summer,’ he said.
Asked whether any of the ageing units would be replaced, the Minister stated that the EAC has gone ahead with an order for its own new generators, which will be of lower capacity. He said that the first two are due in 2028 and the third in 2029, and that they will need to be installed to replace the three old EAC generators at Dekeleia. ‘The solution lies in the arrival of natural gas at Vasiliko, which will largely replace this conventional generation,’ he pointed out.
‘Natural gas is less polluting and cheaper; that is why the energy plan clearly aims to complete the project at Vasiliko before 2030, by which time these EAC units must be decommissioned,’ he said.
Asked about the country’s energy self-sufficiency, Damianos stated that ‘with the arrival of natural gas, we believe that this self-sufficiency will be achieved. Natural gas, new EAC generators, and storage. That is the strategy and that is how we will meet our own energy needs,’ he said.