Parts of the capital Skopje were left without electricity today, as the exceptionally bad state of the hydro plants begins to affect supply.

The MEPSO transportation company blamed the producing ELEM company of not supplying enough energy and lacking the reserves it needs. Hydro plants are quick to come online and are often used when supply dips and demand rises during winter, but as many of the lakes used to produce energy are at the bare minimum, MEPSO said that they had nothing to fall back on, and had to temporarily cut power to some consumers. ELEM is blamed for using much of the hydro potential for profit during the summer, and not leaving enough for the critical winter period. Lake Prespa, the Mavrovo and Debar lakes, and Kalimanci are all critically low on water and public pressure has forced the company to limit production in their linked hydro plants.

At noon we had 400 MW of energy supplied from the Bitola power plant, the TE-TO gas plant in Skopje and the Bogdanci wind park. We had no hydro production online as it was not made available by ELEM, MEPSO said in a press release, issued to explain today’s lack of energy that fell mostly on parts of the capital Skopje.