A sudden power outage hit Tunisia for around three hours. The outage, which lasted about three hours, was reportedly caused by a technical problem.
Tunisia suffered a sudden power cut for around three hours throughout its territory on Wednesday, September 20 due to a technical problem, announced the Steg Electricity and Gas Company, a public monopoly.
The outage occurred around 1 a.m. local time, “because of a sudden breakdown” in the Radès power plant, in the southern suburbs of Tunis, Steg said in a statement without giving details. Electricity began to be restored from 4 a.m. in several neighborhoods of Tunis. According to testimonies on social networks, this outage lasted more than four hours in certain areas. This type of nationwide power outage rarely occurs in Tunisia.
Natural gas from Libya
This summer, due to a heat wave that exceeded 45 degrees Celsius, the authorities had to carry out scheduled load shedding, each time targeting a different region. According to data from June 2023, the public company Steg supplies 99% of electricity in Tunisia, produced mainly from natural gas, with renewable energies (especially photovoltaics) representing only 2.5% of the total.
The country is poor in hydrocarbons, natural gas comes mainly from Algeria thanks to samples at preferential rates made on the gas pipeline linking this country to Italy.
Tunisia also imports natural gas from its Algerian neighbor and neighboring Libya to complete this. Several regions of Tunisia have also experienced drinking water cuts in recent months, due to the drought threatening water reserves. The dams are currently filled to only 27% of their capacity and the government has implemented rationing until the end of September.
