Ecuador tripled industry's power cuts in three weeks to spare households, and the worst period has not yet begun

How the measure grew

On September 18, the Minister of Environment and Energy, Juan Carlos Blum, asked about 150 large industrial firms — the high-voltage consumers, most of them in Guayaquil and Durán — to disconnect from the grid one day a week, in a nearly voluntary way. The goal was to save the water in Mazar, the main reservoir of the electricity system, which was falling faster than expected with the heat and the dry spell brought forward by El Niño. Without the measure, the minister said, the water would last until mid-October.

The scheme began on September 22, already with 185 companies. A week later, the government concluded that the reduction targets had not been met and disconnected them all for 48 hours, extending the measure to about 8,900 medium-voltage companies, most of them in the Sierra. On October 8, it announced three days a week starting on the 12th. During the holiday weekend of October 9 to 11, it disconnected the large industrial firms again, with no set end date. And on October 14 a continuous seven-day disconnection order reached companies; it was annulled hours later as an error, and the official who signed it was fired.

Along the way, the bill also changed. The regulator approved for October, November and December an average tariff of 30 cents of a dollar per kilowatt-hour for large consumers, who had been paying 12. The minister said they would begin to bear the real cost of energy.

The size of the hole

The minister estimated the generation deficit at between 1,000 and 1,200 megawatts and acknowledged that the thermal plants that should cover it were not contracted in time this year. Part of what was already contracted did not arrive: a 90-megawatt thermal plant that should have been operating since January 2025 was delivered with defective engines, according to the state electricity company, which took the case to court. On October 12, the government managed to reconnect 30 megawatts of it.

Given that deficit, the savings obtained from the industrial cuts are modest. The government spoke of 135 to 200 megawatts in the first days. A member of the country's engineering advisory council estimates that the 48-hour disconnections represented about 3.5% of national consumption, which exceeds 100,000 megawatt-hours per day.

The reservoirs kept falling. On October 14, Amaluza, which feeds the Paute plant — responsible for about 19% of demand —, was two meters below the minimum level, and the plant woke up shut down. Mazar stood at 2,123 meters on October 16, about eight meters from the critical level of 2,115.

Colombia, which supplied 5% to 6% of the energy consumed in Ecuador, had suspended sales to meet its own demand. It resumed shipments on October 16, with no volume or price disclosed. Its export capacity is about 450 megawatts, less than half the deficit.

Who pays

The disconnection falls on the sectors that can least afford to stop. Shrimp aquaculture — which, according to the central bank, was the country's main export product between January and July — depends on continuous pumping and oxygenation of the ponds. The president of the sector's chamber warned that an interruption beyond the capacity of the generators can destroy months of work in hours.

Exporters say that about 75% of the volume of exported cargo is perishable and depends on refrigeration. The two main container terminals in Guayaquil were put on the disconnection list; the government replied that both have their own generators. The dairy industry estimates 4,000 direct jobs and 1.8 million liters of milk per day at risk. Cocoa exporters report pauses in the production of chocolate and semi-finished products.

Those with a generator swap the electricity bill for a diesel bill, which is more expensive than in other years and, according to the shrimp sector, hard to get in the quota. Those without one stop.

In the structure of the country's trade, the exposure is large: fishing and aquaculture accounted for 15% of Ecuadorian foreign trade in 2024, and agriculture and food for 12.8%. The body that brings together the largest companies recalls that energy restrictions have taken up to 1.4 percentage points off GDP in previous crises.

Households, for now

The government has repeated that the priority is not to cut power to families. On October 5, President Daniel Noboa said that no family would face a cut.

On the night of October 13 and the early hours of October 14, there were interruptions of several hours in Quito, Guayaquil and cities in at least six provinces, with no official explanation; some distributors attributed the failures to local problems. For October 17, the ministry scheduled early-morning cuts in 16 provinces, for network maintenance. The president said that the worst months of El Niño will run from late November to February.

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The choice to protect households has a social and political logic, and the government has largely kept to it. But it concentrates the adjustment on production, for a gain that covers a small fraction of the deficit. Each week, the bill grew: from 24 to 72 hours without power, from 12 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour.

What could relieve the system in the short term is outside the government's control — rain in the hydroelectric basins and the energy Colombia agrees to sell. The new thermal plants arrive gradually: 45 megawatts rented in Santa Elena from November and 655 megawatts by April 2027, according to the government. Until then, the sectors that sustain the country's exports keep paying for the time that is missing.