All hydroelectric power generators along the Litani River in Lebanon have stopped working, the Litani River Authority announced on Friday.
The generators shut down after all of the Electricité du Liban (EDL) power plants in Lebanon went out of service at 6 AM on Friday, which disabled all high-voltage grids, the Authority said in a statement.
Naturally, this has isolated the hydroelectric power plants from the grid, leading to a “complete cessation of production.”
The Abdel Al and Charles Helou plants will nonetheless continue to operate at low capacity due to the necessity of pumping out the water that flows into them from springs, the Litani River Authority noted.
For technical reasons, only the 15 kV medium-voltage lines will be connected; the plants will be completely isolated from the high-voltage 66 kV lines.
The Authority explained that its power plants are not capable of feeding an isolated network, and therefore, “they cannot remain stable on a network isolated from the EDL’s plants, which have a high capacity that ensures stability on the grid.”
For this reason, the Authority has decided to implement a rationing system on medium-voltage lines directly connected to the Abdel Al and Paul Arqash plants, feeding electricity for three hours followed by three hours of outage, every day, until EDL plants are running again.
