THE GOVERNMENT assured that it has advanced the necessary actions to face the phenomenon of ‘El Niño’, and said that it is prepared to face the weather situation that is expected in the country and that generates uncertainty due to the impacts that it could have in different sectors.
In statements at the National Congress of Public Services and Communications Companies, Andesco, the Vice Minister of Energy (E), Cristian Díaz, reaffirmed the Government’s position and gave a piece of calm stating that “there is no risk of shortages, I mentioned it ago wait a moment, the scenarios that XM is doing as system operator show that the system is indeed prepared to face even a contingency scenario that they execute themselves in their scenarios. What is a contingency scenario, is a scenario of low hydrological conditions that in this case make the simile with hydrology 1516”.
Measurements
Among the measures adopted, the Government explained that the pertinent meetings have been activated within the framework of the Advisory Commission for Coordination and Monitoring of the Energy Situation, allowing two follow-up meetings to be held in 2022 and in 2023 to date the holding of four meetings.
Likewise, 13 official sessions have been held between the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Mining-Energy Planning Unit, XM, generators, among other main players in the country’s energy sector.
In the meetings, the vice-minister stated that “crucial aspects such as medium-term (1 to 5 years) and short-term (weekly and monthly) operational planning have been reviewed, reservoirs have been monitored and the evolution of demand, adequately accompanied the supply of fuels through meetings with generators, unions, among others, to validate the current state of fuel supply and supply logistics: Coal Route and Gas Route. In addition, a maintenance review has been carried out on thermal plants, especially those with firm energy obligations”.
In the same way, the Government trusts in some tasks that the Energy and Gas Regulation Commission, Creg, must carry out, among which is regulating the “necessary mechanisms so that users and demand aggregators can offer reductions, disconnections of demand or other participation schemes in the Wholesale Energy Market with the objective of giving reliability to the National Interconnected System, supporting Firm Energy obligations, reducing prices in the Energy Market or alleviating the costs of restrictions”.
In the same way, it was noted that there is a 90% probability that ‘El Niño’ will reach Colombia in August of this year, under the analyzes carried out by the Climate Prediction Center of the United States Meteorological Agency.
Conditions
According to the publication of the Diagnostic Discussion by the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it is reported that “’El Niño’ conditions are present and are expected to strengthen gradually until the northern hemisphere winter 2023-2024″, which means that summer could hit hard for almost a year.
Diana Carolina Rueda, head of the Ideam forecasting office, assured that ‘El Niño’ “is due to the continuous increase in Pacific temperatures”. In other words, an important indicator is that the waters remain for a long period of time with a temperature higher than 0.5 °C, but in the last week, all the ‘El Niño’ monitoring regions have presented anomalies of the sea surface temperature greater than 0.5 °C.
Likewise, Ideam pointed out that the coupling of the atmospheric system is reporting the negative value of the Southern Oscillation Index (IOS), as well as the weakening of the trade winds in the western region of the equatorial Pacific.