North Cyprus’s electricity woes continue into third day as power cuts continues

Sporadic power cuts continued across north Cyprus into a third day on Sunday after an explosion at a substation in Güzelyurt on Friday had caused the entire grid to collapse.

The TRNC’s electricity authority Kib-Tek’s general manager Dalman Aydin explained on Sunday that while the fault at the substation where the explosion occurred, just outside Güzelyurt, has now been “resolved”, a fault has “persisted” at one of the TRNC’s two power stations, causing power cuts to continue.

He said hat fault “could be resolved by Wednesday” and that maintenance teams are “waiting for the power plant to cool down before the problem can be resolved”, though he did not say which of the two power stations suffered the malfunction.

North Cyprus has two power stations, the Teknecik power station near Kyrenia, which is owned by Kib-Tek, and the Kalecik power station, in the village of Mehmetçik, near Iskele, which is owned by Turkish energy firm Aksa.

Aydin also said on Sunday that Kib-Tek is preparing a report on the faults, and that this report will be “shared with the public in the coming days”.

The explosion occurred at around 5am on Friday at a substation near the village of Güneşköy, around a mile southwest of Güzelyurt, with Kib-Tek saying that it had occurred inside the substation’s central circuit breakers and caused “serious damage” to the substation’s transformer.

Kib-Tek workers arrived on the scene on Friday afternoon to commence an investigation, and to begin the cleanup operation from the explosion.

TRNC president Ersin Tatar then visited the substation in Güneşköy on Friday evening alongside Aydin on Friday evening.

Later on Friday evening, Aydin had given a press conference in which he insisted that every substation in the north undergoes annual maintenance, either in spring or autumn, and that the substation in Güneşköy was “newly built”.

Therefore, he said, claims that the explosion had been caused by neglect “do not reflect the truth”.

Meanwhile, TRNC’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel who has been away from the island on holiday returned Sunday, and chaired an emergency cabinet meeting on the matter of energy on Sunday afternoon.

No statements were made to the press after that meeting.

The inside of the substation after the explosion

Meanwhile, problems with the supply of electricity continued to cause knock-on effects for other infrastructure, with the entirety of the town of Famagusta being cut off from mains water throughout the weekend.

The Famagusta municipality had announced on Saturday that a failure had occurred in the pipes near the village of Yeni Bogazici, and that teams had been deployed to attempt to fix the issue.

As such, it called on residents to “use water consciously and economically during this process”.

On Sunday, the municipality promised that teams from Turkey had arrived to help fix the issue, and that the supply of mains water would likely be restored on Monday.

Anecdotal reports abounded of power surges playing havoc with electrical appliances throughout the weekend, with one incident of an air conditioning unit bursting into flames being widely reported by local media.

The ongoing issues prompted a condemnation from opposition political figure and presidential candidate Tufan Erhurman who said if he is elected in October, he would work to fix the underlying problems which led to the weekend of power cuts.

“We will count the population, we will form a plan, we will depoliticise our institutions, especially Kib-Tek. We will specialise, professionalise, and we will make them autonomous. We will ensure that merit prevails in public administration in this country,” he said.

“We will do it all together. It is our duty to leave our children a country where they will live a life worthy of human dignity, where they will not want to emigrate, and where, if they are abroad, they will want to return.”