An outage at a key power plant, coupled with scorching temperatures of over 50°C has forced Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) to roll out country-wide 1-2 hour/day power cuts this week. The crisis kicked in on 19 June when a 300MW steam turbine unit went offline at the 6GW Az Zour South power complex, coinciding with peak load of 16.81GW, almost 1GW above the previous June record and within touching distance of the all-time high of 16.94GW set last August. Peak load dipped slightly to 16.43GW on 20 June.
MEW expects cuts to continue for “at least two weeks” as work to bring online idle units currently undergoing maintenance at Az Zour South is finished, local daily Anbaa reports. (CONTINUED - 262 WORDS)