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Category: blackout

The summer of blackouts

2020-09-21 / / 0 Comments

An introduction to a chronic issue

The summer of 2020 breaks a national records of how many blackouts occurred in one year. I lost count at 7 but I am sure it’s around 10 times. All of which has been announced on the official page of the general electric company, and very well documented if I may add.

A culture of “No shame”

In normal circumstances whomever charge for the energy sector would resign in shame following such atrocities (knowing my compatriots that’s not a thing), and you’d expect that they’d be fired. No one is fired.. They are relieved of their duties and rotated to another position within the same organization.. Marvelous.

Japanese officials bowing in apology. Source: The independent.

Just wondering, if our electric company officials had to bow for every outage or blackout, how many life times would they spend bowing?

Overlapping authorities

One thing always boggled me, where do the authorities of the electric company end and the ministry of electricity and renewable energy starts? Is there a practical usage of “renewable energy” in Libya? Is the ministry really just a container for a company? Then one of them is surely redundant?!

The numbers .. They just don’t add up!

Libya is an oil producing company, a member of the OPEC, and has a very low population to space ratio and an even lower population increase percentage (1.5% in 2018); and a population of 6.75 Million people according to Wikipedia. So having a crippling energy crisis seems suspicious even to the best of intentions.

Lack of transparency

There are a lot of numbers not being presented to the masses.

How much energy is produced in Libya per day per megawatts?

How much is the deficiency in megawatts per day?

How much are the costs and revenues of the sector?

No one knows for sure, all the people know that the hours of power outages are increasing, up to several days at end. With no plausible justification for this lack of competence. The amount of money spent on the sector is in the billions of dollars. With no improvement whatsoever.

Post war blues

A war just ended and everyone is feeling the burn. A year and two months of assault won’t go in a heartbeat. The electric grid has sustained a lot of damage and it would take a lot of time and effort to repair what’s been damaged.
It’s worth noting that blocking the production of oil – the main source of income for Libya- is a major factor in this suffering indeed. (Thanks uncle Hafter, I hope you fry in hell).

An oil production facility.

Final words

It’s been almost 10 years since the uprising in 2011. The situation is at its worse (so far) and threatening to deteriorate even worse. That ironically would make us reminisce about the good old days when we had power for two hours every other day.

I’m just using the hours of not having electricity (or lately the hours of having it) as an index for happiness and misery.

A vicious cycle

2017-12-22 / / 0 Comments
Heads up: This post was written for venting purpose only, it doesn’t provide any solutions or suggest them even remotely, and yes; it’s pretty damn depressing.

For the German version of this post, click here.  

I’m still living in Libya – using the term living loosely as usual -, and it seems like all my attempts to get out are failing miserably, so for what’s it worth, I’m sticking here for a while.

Everyday life

It always amazes me, how these people can survive on scraps, now matter how long I ponder this I can’t seem to wrap my head around it, and whoever is ruling seems to be pushing them to the limits, see how long they can survive without security, water, electricity, money and infra structure.
But somehow they are surviving. a bit like the walking dead – if you ever watched that show.
Word breaks out of a clash somewhere, huge lines at gas stations, that crisis ends and soon after a cooking gas crisis begins.
One shortage after the other, one made up crisis after the other. War breaks without notice in this hell hole. It defies reason and defies purpose. Yet that is how the system -and I use the term loosely- works.
If it rained like it would normally do, the streets would drown and mobility becomes very limited, usually combined with long power outages.

Photo credit: Safepath Group

Attempting to apply logic to these people is a sin, life is turning into a paradox inside of a paradox covered in camouflage textile.

The economy

No matter how hard they strike at them, they don’t respond. No matter how high the prices rise or how long the queues get to obtain basic needs, they just get lined up to get whatever for however.
It gets colder, the electricity goes off for days, it gets hotter the electricity also gets off for days on end, for an economy with so much inflation going on I’m surprised that there is a lack of money in the banks!
What are they doing then? Mostly stabbing each other in the back and trying to make the most of a bad situation, raising the prices of goods and services to squeeze every penny possible from people.

Others aren’t as affected by the situation like most

While most Libyans struggle to make ends meet, a few are living the life! Pictures of fancy homes, cars, and lavishing weddings surface on-line (thanks to facebook for this) to brag fortane and social status. With everything being covered in Nuttela chocolate (it’s a big deal here for some reason!).
Libyans always liked to brag in weddings and show that they have as much money as the next guy, even if they have to borrow money in order to do so, but that kind of splurging money is a whole new level. Is it a case of the lipstick effect?

The political scene in Libya

For a country that has a pair of each: Government, parliament, central bank. Everything is going down hill (assuming that the more the merrier of course)

  • Corruption eating away what’s left of Libya’s wealth.
  • No security
  • Local currency is non existent, and for something so rare it’s worthless.
  • No functioning bodies of governance.
  • No power / fuel to operate basic daily needs.

Governments change without the slights audit, in fact most of the former ministers and prime ministers are enjoying a peaceful retirement abroad, and no one checked if they embezzled money before leaving office, as if anyone one cared!
Laws are passed without anyone noticing and the only rule is the lack of rules!
How will a government work right if it’s not audited by the parliament.
How will the parliament asses any thing if the members fail to meet each time?!

The vicious cycle

Sadly most of the problems that are happening now happened before, some happened years ago like the liquidity issue and the high price of the US dollar on the black market, others happen each year like the water ponds caused by rain fall, if these issues are periodical, than they can be easily predicted and solved if there was a government of sort, but no! These issues will continue to occur because that’s how Libya functions.

Finally

Will it be fixed someday? Does anyone have a magic wand to make it all better? Chances are no one does. But if everyone does his part and takes responsibility for their action, then things could improve.

As a young man who grew up and lived all of his life in Libya, I don’t think that it will be fixed in my life time, and I’m not too excited about starting a family in these conditions and hope that my children would have it better.

I really hope that the people of this country wake up, and realize that what are they doing is drowning all of us, because we are on the same boat.

Total blackout in Tripoli, 200,000 views update

2017-01-15 / / 0 Comments
It’s no secret that the electricity in Libya is terrible, the company who is supposed to provide electricity to Libyans failed doing the one job it was supposed to do, the only thing they could do is make up excuses for failure..




Failure of the GECOL


In the last couple of years all they do is posting on Facebook saying how many hours of outage to expect, calculating Libya’s electric production and deficiency. These programmed power outages are meant to stabilize the power grid and to prevent blackouts. Many cities refuse programmed power cuts to stabilize the grid, so Tripoli takes most of the power cuts in the summer and in the winter, as if that wasn’t enough, some protesters closed a main gas line that fuels a major power station, threatening a blackout on most of Libya.

The blackout

We could tell this was different, usually the electricity goes off instantly, after 5 years of misery you start to get used to the outages, this outage on the other hand faded slowly, like a circle of darkness closing down on the center. As soon as the power went out communications said farewell, the dwindling Wimax service went down immediately and Libyana struggled to get a signal. Since it was night time, I decided to go up stairs and see the range of the outage, since controlled outages usually leave some places with power while turning off others, and there were some places that were “untouchable”, unaffected by the outages, so I looked for these first, but what I saw was completely different!!

I could see the stars! 

Stars usually disappear because of the city lights, but they were visible clearly that night (I haven’t seen stars this clear since the 2011 uprising when the power went off for 11 straight days). Darkness was all over the city, with some scattered spots of light here and there, I could tell right away that they were generators.


The nights stars are clearly visible thanks to the blackout


Why did it happen?

We learned that while trying to operate one of the power stations that was off, a huge power surge caused a blackout on most of Libya, even cities unaffected with the programmed power cuts, and while the power returned since dawn to most cities, Tripoli doesn’t have power,I’m using what’s left of the battery power to write these lines before the laptop goes into slumber.



Final words

The winter is still pretty cold, people are dying each day of cold and sickness in this cruel winter, when will this misery end?

On a brighter note, my blog reached 200,000 view, what a way to celebrate it, let’s put off a candle, or the whole country to celebrate!


Too soon?

Please share this post on social media, let everyone know what’s it like to live in Tripoli, and I use the word “live” loosely..

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