‘Malfunction’ at power station causes rolling blackouts in the north

There were rolling power cuts in the north over the weekend after a ‘malfunction’ was detected at one of its power stations.

While the seriousness of the malfunction has not been disclosed, the north’s electricity authority’s (Kib-Tek) board of directors’ chairman Huseyin Pasha said that the power cuts had been planned to alternate “so that people do not suffer”.

He added “we are trying to have energy supplied from the south to close the gap between output and consumption”.

The blackouts were supposed to end at 9pm on Sunday, but many residents of the north were complaining longer into Sunday night that power had not returned. Pasha said the malfunction could not be dealt with due to the weekend’s high temperatures.

The power station malfunction comes at the end of a turbulent week for Kib-Tek. Last Monday, Turkish private energy company Aksa claimed that Kib-Tek owed them over 1 billion TL (€29.5 million), and the north’s ‘government’ ordered them to take out a 805 million TL (€23.8 million) loan to pay the debts off on Thursday.