The remarkable decline of Kuwait’s power generation sector hit a new and unwanted milestone last month; peak load exceeded available generation capacity. Recently released statistics from the Ministry of Electricity (MEWRE) show that peak load reached a June record of 16.98GW (up 5.5% year-on-year), exceeding available capacity of 16.275GW. Worse still, when demand hit 16.98GW on 22 May, available capacity was lower still at just 15.46GW due to ongoing maintenance work.
In order to handle this, Kuwait significantly increased its reliance on electricity imports through the GCC interconnection (GCCIA) in the second half of May. Daily imports averaged around 14GWh (580MW) for the first half of the month, but from 21 May onwards they spiked to around 24GWh (1GW). (CONTINUED - 227 WORDS)