From one year to the next, everyone in Lebanon
reverts to the waiting game: the country’s political fate and its social and
economic situations…As it should be observable; Lebanon has not been able to
deliver on most of what is expected of it but especially electricity.
People in Lebanon are divided into two: those
who can afford to pay around $100 to the corporation and private suppliers, and
those who spend long hours in darkness.
Yet, the result remains at the end of the day:
the power stays out, while those with high incomes can enjoy continual uninterrupted
electricity from whatever source.
As I conducted the six-steps problem solving criteria for such issue, the obvious root causes of the problem was technical, financial and
institutional ones.
Technical problems are branched into generation,
transmission and distribution. EDL has an inadequate generation capacity, a
continued operation of the gas plants on diesel rather than natural gas which
leads to 75% over budget, and ageing and inadequate maintenance of plants.
Transmission problems are the result of incomplete 220 KV and 400 KV networks
and the unavailable National Control Center (NCC) that must include Supervisory
Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) facilities. It was called for in 1993!
This delayed establishment prevents centralized remote operation and control of
major system components, thereby slowing down maneuvers and preventing economic
load dispatch. Distribution problems include lack of resiliency, partially old
and overloaded plants and illegal connections.
Two parts constitute EDL's financial problems: high operation cost,
and low return.
The first part is attributed to the operation on diesel instead of
natural gas, uneconomic operation of plants, and increased technical losses. On
the other hand, the second part is caused by worldwide escalating price of
diesel, increased non-technical losses, and inadequate collection.
The technical and financial problems described above are strongly
compounded with institutional ones, whose immediate resolution is an urgent
prerequisite to all the remedial measures mentioned above. Board &
Management at EDL have an insufficient decision power and influenced by
politics and fear of lawsuits, where delays in finishing the projects can’t be
improved by the board of directors. In addition to the absence of a clear
achievement criteria based on which the performance of EDL can be evaluated. The
present staff average age at EDL is in the mid fifties lacking the competence
and training, and suffering from inefficient procedures and adaptation to
modern Management Information Systems. Moreover EDL encounters an absence of
high level technical coordination among various departments and unreliable
reporting (financial, statistical, performance indicators, etc.)
People definitely need to
start talking about the issue and make it as public as possible, where
democratic, peaceful steps must be initiated to come to a resolution of this
problem.
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