Longer Cyprus blackouts this summer?
We shall have half a million tourists by July-August
Author’s photo of portable solar panels on the balcony.
Last month I took a sizeable chunk out of the fund called “my 20-year-old-car-is-dying” to buy a set of portable photovoltaic (PV) panels and two large power packs. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not something that would be plugged into the grid without a licence. It is something you might take camping with you.
The package sat behind my desk for a few of weeks but, as the photo shows, I am now in the process of checking whether I can completely recharge the packs using only the sun. My hope is that, come the summer blackouts that I am expecting, I shall at least be able to keep the fridge going for a while with the bigger pack and perhaps a desk fan and laptop with the other one. I also have a cooker that works with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and a very pretty, state-of-the-art water filter that needs no electricity.
Am I about to head off into the hills, wear an odd-looking hat and live off-grid? No. But having lived through the 2011 blackout, when the explosion of confiscated Iranian explosives killed 13 people and blew up the main power station in Cyprus, leading to four weeks of (admittedly very efficiently scheduled) power cuts, I am incentivized to make some contingency plans.
Blackouts in February
Cyprus-dwellers will probably understand why I have started to prepare early this year. During particularly cold weather on 24 February the Cyprus Transmission Service Operator (TSO) announced that it would implement rolling power cuts because of a failure of Unit 1 at the Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) Vasilikos power station. The units in Vasilikos are pretty old and run on a combination of high-emission diesel and heavy fuel oil (mazut). Mazut is the effluent of the oil and gas industry, so is dirtiest fuel on the planet.
Although the TSO said on 25 February that no power cuts were ultimately required, friends living in Nicosia old town said they did have an outage at home. Earlier, on 17 February, there was an emergency drawdown from the electricity system of northern Cyprus. As subscribers to my monthly Sapienta Country Analysis Cyprus will know, the north’s system is even more rickety than that of the south, therefore it cannot be relied upon full time.
Let’s pause and take this in for a moment. We had power blackouts in winter, in a month when we had only 133,760 tourists. Based on last year’s figures, by July and August we shall have more than half a million tourists each month in the summer, guzzling way more electricity than locals as they relax on the balcony with the windows open and the air-conditioning on at full blast. (For readers in cooler climes, if you actually pay the electricity bill you would never leave doors/windows open in a house/car while running aircon, as it only makes indoors hotter and makes the aircon gobble more energy by working harder.)
Worse still, we also have a severe water crisis, requiring increased use energy-intensive desalination plants that also cannot cope. Alas the no-brainer of accepting water from the water pipeline that links northern Cyprus with Turkey, perhaps in exchange for pledged support to Turkish Cypriots for any forest fires this summer, does not seem to be on the table.
While there have been various emergency meetings to try and ensure the lights are kept on this summer, the February crisis was why I went out and bought the power pack.
I do not have the option for PV on the roof, as I live in an apartment building. Apartment roofs in Cyprus are already crowded with water tanks, water pumps, the old-technology solar panels that heat only water, as well as assorted satellite dishes, TV aerials, lightning rods, pigeon droppings and goodness knows what else if you are unlucky enough to have inconsiderate neighbours (mine are thankfully all right).
This means that technology, or perhaps just regulations in the Republic of Cyprus, have not yet worked out how to incentivize apartment-dwellers to hook up with a system that can actually provide PV-powered electricity.
Thus, although 47% of dwellings are apartments according to the latest census, we are second-class citizens when it comes to cutting our fuel bills, especially if you don’t own a second “house in the village”, where you can make use of your PV allowance.
The system keeps rejecting PV
And even if I did have a roof to put PV on, those who have spent thousands on installing PV panels on their house roofs in Cyprus know that this does not necessarily guarantee you electricity. The current PV system in Cyprus is a grid-connected or “utility-interactive” one, with the majority on what is called a net metering system. Energy produced is sent to the grid and you receive credits for what is absorbed by the grid.
This system means that, as of now, you are not permitted to connect your rooftop PV to your own mains; you have to send all the electricity produced to the grid. Worse, an ageing grid with little storage is unable to cope with a surge in renewable energy sources (RES), and therefore rejects PV power on an almost daily basis (see screenshot from late March).
The EAC defends the practice, saying that owners lose maybe €12 (per year, I think) from the rejections, compared with savings of €240 every two months because of the net metering system. There is also a big rush to install utility-scale storage to reduce the frequency of these rejections. The energy minister, George Papanastasiou, has also suggested that the government is now considering letting PV owners install systems that will allow them to disconnect from the system and use their own domestically produced energy. However, given that my DIY centre kit cost almost €1,700, one can imagine that a system that has batteries big enough to run air-conditioning would cost multiples of that.
Next week I shall write about how a developed economy managed to get to such a crisis in the first place.
Going “reader-supported”
In this issue I am turning Sapienta Cyprus Snippets into a “reader-supported” publication. Even though my micro enterprise’s income is not highly dependent on the US taxpayer, I have already felt the chill wind of US cutbacks. At the same time, Ian Dunt on his Striking 13 Substack made a very good case why, in a world where all the democracy-killing content is free, you should keep quality content in front of a paywall. This persuaded me to go the reader-supported route, as opposed to the “must pay” route. It means you do not have to pay. But it would help me a great deal if you did.
For every €49 annual subscription, €4.90 will go to Substack, €1.10 or perhaps more will go to Stripe (which is why I have essentially switched off monthly payments) and €9.31 will go to the VAT authorities of Cyprus. So I shall receive €33.69 for each paid subscription and less if Sapienta makes a profit, as there will then be corporate tax and withholding tax to pay. Thanks and blessings to all who cough up.
And if you want a monthly deep-dive analysis on a consistent range of topics (politics, energy, public finances, banking sector, macroeconomy, economy of northern Cyprus) you can find out about a subscription to my flagship product here.
