Istanbul/Ankara (dpa) – Brief electricity outages are nothing unusual in Turkey. But last winter, tens of thousands of people often sat for hours in the darkness, even in such large metropolises as Istanbul and the capital Ankara.
Because gas also frequently gets cut off and furnaces often don’t work, it also would get uncomfortably cold for the residents.
This winter promises not to be much better: according to reports, energy consumption in Turkey has risen an average 8.5 per cent annually during the past ten years – faster than growth in energy production. As a result, outages are pre-programmed.
“This is their work”, a recent headline in the newspaper Hurriyet screamed, while printing the pictures of Turkey’s various energy ministers of the past decade.
The front-page story also showed a picture of doctors trying to perform an operation in the dim light created by a gas lamp. “At the outset of the 21st Century this is something we don’t want to experience,” the paper commented.
Experts complain that for years too little has been invested in Turkey’s power infrastructure. The newspaper Sabah put it bluntly: “Either measures, or electricity outages.”
Energy Minister Cumhur Ersumer of the Motherland Party recently had to inform the cabinet of how serious the situation had become.
At the moment, the main headache for the ministers concerns the hydroelectric dams in the eastern part of the country.
After an extremely dry and hot summer, the water levels of the Ataturk, Keban and Karakaya lakes – facilities which normally produce 60 per cent of Turkey’s hydroelectric output – have dropped to a critical point.
In order to prevent the worst from happening, Ersumer wants to purchase additional natural gas and electricity from Iran, Russia, Georgia and Bulgaria. Otherwise, according to reports, Turks can soon start girding themselves for electricity cutoffs of one to two hours every day.
The energy minister is also giving consideration to a nationwide energy conservation programme. In serious situations, street lighting “at non-critical locations” might be reduced to a minimum or completely shut off. This could save some 2.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per day.
Advertising signs, store window lighting and building illumination lamps could also be shut off.
Another measure in the case of an energy emergency could be to have football matches played at daytime, instead of at night, in order to save the electricity from floodlights, while a further step could be to start the working day in civil service jobs one hour earlier in order to make better use of daylight.
Such a shifting of the working hourse could create monthly energy savings of 20 to 30 million kilowatt-hours.
A few weeks ago Turkey, for financial reasons, distanced itself from plans to build what would be the country’s first nuclear power plant, but it is in the process of building other new power facilities.
In addition to gas-fired and hydroelectric plants, Ankara also wants to make more use of wind generation.
But these projects will in part only be completed in the years ahead. In the meantime, many people are already getting ready for new electricity outages. According to Hurriyet, amid the reports of an “electricity alarm”, sales of generators have increase by one-fourth recently.
