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Power

Lebanon's National Electricity Grid Collapses (msn.com) 129

Posted by EditorDavid from the dark-skies dept.
"Lebanon's electricity network collapsed on Saturday," reports the Washington Post, "after the two most important power stations ran out of fuel, leaving private generators as the only source of power." The state-owned electricity company has been providing citizens with just a few hours of power a day for months, but the total collapse of the national grid will compound the misery of those who can't afford to run generators and had relied on those few hours. The outage marks the latest milestone in the unraveling of Lebanon, which is undergoing what the World Bank has described as one of the world's three biggest financial collapses of the past 150 years.

The banking system was the first to implode in 2019, triggering a 90 percent slide in the value of the currency that has left the government unable to afford fuel, food and medicine imports while plunging millions of Lebanese into poverty. The electricity grid ground to a halt after the country's two main power stations, Deir Ammar and Zahrani, ran out of diesel fuel, leaving the nationwide network without the minimum amount of power required to sustain it, said Energy Minister Walid Fayyad.

The government is working to secure emergency fuel supplies from other sources, including the army, to bridge the shortfall until a shipment of Iraqi oil due to arrive Saturday night can be offloaded and distributed into the network. At most, he said, the total outage can be expected to last only a couple of days, and he hoped to find a stopgap solution faster. But the collapse is a reminder of the dire state of Lebanon's electricity sector, which has been unable to provide 24-hour power for decades. In recent months, its capacity has been further eroded by the lack of money and by corruption, with smugglers diverting state purchases of fuel to sell at a profit in neighboring Syria.

A recent deal struck with Iraq to supply 80,000 tons of fuel a month still falls short of the minimum amount required to ensure a stable grid and at most will be able to keep the power on for about four hours a day, Fayyad said.
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Lebanon's National Electricity Grid Collapses More

Lebanon's National Electricity Grid Collapses

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  • Should solve in due time (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cheesybagel ( 670288 ) on Saturday October 09, 2021 @09:52PM (#61876457)

    They are going to open up the pipeline which comes from Egypt via Jordan and Syria.
    In the long term the supply problems will be solved.

    I think the banks are the least of their problems. Having their major city and capital together with their main port blow up recently was the real problem.

    • A major F*up of their own making [youtu.be] no less.

      • Re:Should solve in due time (Score:4, Insightful)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 ) on Sunday October 10, 2021 @02:32AM (#61876855)

        A major F*up of their own making [youtu.be] no less.

        Bear in mind that the population of Lebanon has increased rapidly in the last 10 years. Something like 1/3 the population is now Syrian refugees.

        • "Something like 1/3 the population is now Syrian refugees"

          Their choice, their mess. I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            Their choice, their mess. I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

            What? They should have moved their country? Reneged on obligations under UN rules? Shot people fleeing violence? What is it that you think Lebanon should have done?

            • I was just stating the fact that they allowed people to flood into their country. If they didn't have the capability to handle that, it's on them.

              I don't really care what goes on in that country. But I am not going to shed any tears over a choice that they made.

              Life is cruel. Life is unfair. Things go wrong all the time. And I simply refuse to kowtow to anyone who expects me to turn on the crocodile tears for anything.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

                I was just stating the fact that they allowed people to flood into their country. If they didn't have the capability to handle that, it's on them.

                There are obligations under the UN charters. Refusing to allow people in isn't necessarily an option. How do you propose Lebanon stop millions of people? Lebanon asked for international support because of this. It's a humanitarian disaster of international proportions. You are expecting something quite unrealistic.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by quenda ( 644621 )

          Bear in mind that the population of Lebanon has increased rapidly in the last 10 years. Something like 1/3 the population is now Syrian refugees.

          Their problems go back much further. For a while after independence, the future looked good. Beirut was prosperous. Christian, Sunni and Shia shared power peacefully.
          But southern Lebanon was flooded with refugees after the Arab–Israeli War, which lead eventually to the 1975 civil war.
          Lebanese refugees in turn left the country in large numbers. There are many here in Australia from the Lebanese hinterland, and despite being apparently highly motivated, they and their children do very poorly in schoo

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

            Bear in mind that the population of Lebanon has increased rapidly in the last 10 years. Something like 1/3 the population is now Syrian refugees.

            Their problems go back much further.

            Of course, and I know first generation immigrants from Lebanon. This is just the latest of a series of issues, but one of the biggest at the moment. Lebanon has been crying out for aid to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis for a decade, but despite promises of aid, it's still slow in coming. It's a huge number to absorb, and even if Lebanon could legally turn them away, it wouldn't have the resources to do so at the border. A lot of refugees have also gone to Jordan, and a friend worked in the camps there

    • Re:Should solve in due time (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Saturday October 09, 2021 @10:42PM (#61876521)

      > They are going to open up the pipeline which comes from Egypt via Jordan and Syria.

      This is unlikely. It's too vulnerable to the area's religious radicals. I'd expect oil in that pipeline to be stolen, spilled, ignited, or all three before it gets past the borders of Lebanon.

      • maybe they should build solar, even without batteries they'll get more than a few hours of power a day, with minimal ongoing costs

        • What makes you believe that they don't already have plenty of solar power? According to Wikipedia they have net metering laws to support solar power to the grid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
          I assume net metering is no different in Lebanon than it is in the USA, that is when the central power plants stop producing electricity then so do the solar panels. This is to prevent problems with down power lines still being live from rooftop solar PV which has the potential to injure utility workers, and to p

          • Re:PV on grid is shit. (Re: Should solve in due ti (Score:5, Informative)

            by bluegutang ( 2814641 ) on Sunday October 10, 2021 @04:18AM (#61876979)

            I'm thinking that they need some onshore windmills, hydro, and geothermal power. Emphasis on hydro and geothermal since those are far more reliable than wind and solar. Oh, and there is another energy source to consider but it shall not be mentioned or it triggers people. You know, the "N-word". I don't mean natural gas.

            Lebanon is in the Middle East. It has no large rivers to supply hydro, and no active volcanos to supply geothermal. You could put some windmills onshore, but you'd have to tear up the picturesque Lebanon mountains to do so (not sure if these are officially nature reserves, but they should be). And put a nuclear power plant in a war-torn state effectively run by "Death to America, death to Israel" Hezbollah? No thanks.

            Solar+batteries is not going to supply all of Lebanon's power needs due to the extremely high population density (this is also true of wind), but solar+batteries can be a good start. Beyond that, Lebanon will have to be supplied by fossil fuels or by HVDC cables from abroad (from its neighbors, or by underwater cables from places like Turkey or Egypt). Those are the only options, due to essentially physical limitations. Unless there is an unexpected massive technical breakthrough regarding some other power source, but let's not count on miracles.

            • MadMan is just an idiot - no idea why I keep answering to his bullcrap. Better just ignore him.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              If we want to save the picturesque Lebanon mountains then putting windmills on them is probably the best choice. Otherwise as you say they will burn fossil fuels and those areas won't stay picturesque as global temperature rises.

          • Rooftop solar PV turned out to be a really shitty idea out in California when people were losing power because of wildfires.

            So it was a shitty idea because it solved a different problem than the one you came up with? Solar PV isn't there to keep the lights on during a disaster, it's there to stop us fucking up the world causing disasters in the first place.

            If you want to keep your lights on you get a generator.

            In other news it was a really shitty idea to try and use my road bicycle to cycle across the Atlantic ocean. I nearly drowned. Therefor road bicycles are bad and really no one should use them.

          • that is when the central power plants stop producing electricity then so do the solar panels.
            No they don't. Why would they?
            They only do no longer feed into the grid, feeding into a dead grid is pointless.

            If they think the air quality is bad now during wildfires then just wait until a million people fire up [...] and LPG portable generators all at once.
            LPG gas generators do not pollute the air. Dumbass ...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Kremmy ( 793693 )
              a lot of those grid-tie systems without battery banks become useless because of just that. They feed into the grid while you receive power from the grid, and the system breaks down during the outages. Some of the power companies are actually talking about configuring micro-grids to make it possible for local grid-tie solar systems to continue energizing local grids but there's a lot of ground to cover for it to work.

              • We are talking about hypotethical roof top solar in a situation where the grid collapses.
                Obviously they would no longer feed into the grid.

                Nothing prevents them from charging phones, running a fridge or what ever is in their power range.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          "You can't afford bread? Why don't you eat cake?"

        • Nah, solar would never work in the desert. :)

        • I would strongly suggest you actually learn more about solar power than what you read in solar panel sales brochures.

          A panel itself produces a fluctuating level of power based on the light hitting the panel, angle, clouds, position of sun all impact how much amperage and voltage the panel puts out. Which is why they must have batteries for off grid usage, not just storage. Without a continuous stable supply of additional power from a battery pack or mains grid to smooth out the power from the PV array a s

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Uecker ( 1842596 )

            Huh? Of course you can power appliances with solar power also without batteries if the sun is shining. You then waste power you can not use directly and will not have power at night, but it would still be far better than no power at all.

          • Which is why they must have batteries for off grid usage, not just storage.
            That is just nonsense. There is plenty of stuff you can power directly from a solar panel without a battery. E.g. a fridge, a water pump, air con etc ...

            You are just an idiot.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Kremmy ( 793693 )
              Maybe one of those 12V camper coolers or a small fan but you're not running a full size fridge or an air conditioner on solar without a battery bank. The battery bank acts like a capacitor to smooth the power out and if conditions aren't perfect you can actually do serious damage to things that need more current by trying to run them on raw solar. Brownouts can be more damaging than surges for an awful lot of devices no matter how much energy they draw.

              • Sorry, you are mistaken.
                You can basically run anything running on DC on an DC supply.
                If you have not enough voltage, the appliance wont start.
                And thats it.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Kremmy ( 793693 )
                  If you have sufficient supply, you can run it. If you have insufficient supply, you may be able to kick it on just enough to brown it out. A cloud moving overhead will cause a sufficient voltage and current drop to cause damage to things that need the juice. The inverter for your AC appliances plugs into the battery, not the panels.

                • Sorry, you are mistaken.
                  You can basically run anything running on DC on an DC supply.
                  If you have not enough voltage, the appliance wont start.
                  And thats it.

                  Sorry you can't do shit with PVs without batteries or grid tie. You just assume hey I have volts and amps and I can use this but it doesn't work that way. The output is too inconsistent and you would be wasting most of the systems capacity without load matching PV output.

                  The idea you are going to run a fridge or an aircond without a battery is frankly ridiculous. Bet you couldn't even find kit for sale that would even let you do it.

                  • Sorry you can't do shit with PVs without batteries or grid tie.
                    Well, my 2kW solar panel and my DC pump disagree.
                    The pump pumps when the sun is shining ... what else would it do?

                    There is no fucking difference between a solar panel powering a DC device versus your childhood flash light battery you used to read a book under your bed blanket.

      • And why would religious radicals steal oil from the people around them that share the same religion?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bbn ( 172659 )

          "And why would religious radicals steal oil from the people around them that share the same religion?"

          Because they do not believe in democracy yet do not agree on who the leader should be. That can only lead to one thing.

    • Re:Should solve in due time (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday October 10, 2021 @02:26AM (#61876845) Journal

      It's not about a pipeline, it's a political issue. One group is relatively powerful, but has its own agenda [apnews.com]. From the article:

      “An increasing number of Lebanese are realizing that the concept of a Lebanese state cannot coexist with a powerful armed militia serving an outside power,”

    • Doesn't matter if they can't afford to pay for the fuel.

      I understand they have not had a proper grid in the pass few decades, so I don't think it matters much now that the "grid" is down.

    • So, nothing to do with their corrupt kleptocratic govt then?

  • Stagnaticity is death. You have a country with ample solar energy to harvest and a government likely simply trying to maintain the status quo.

    It would be great to be informed on why the banking system collapsed and my conclusion that solar is an easy solution may ignore that the terrain isn't as easy to build large scale solar farms but I suspect it's a lack of investment in the sector. I also wonder if the middle East has the energy infrastructure to allow net exporting of energy.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by general_re ( 8883 )
      They can't afford diesel fuel, which is generally dirt cheap. What makes you think they can afford thousands of hectares of solar farms?

      • Re:Old habits die hard (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Saturday October 09, 2021 @10:29PM (#61876499) Journal

        Fuel is an ongoing cost that in this case puts you at them at the mercy of external markets and supply chains (and having their fuel stolen by smugglers)

        Solar has a higher up-front cost but negligible operating costs, no fuel cost and is self sufficient.

        So really the question is, how could they afford to not transition to solar? Especially if they've already not been getting reliable power for decades because their current system is so jacked up... if there was ever a time to start moving away from fossil fuels it's now. Instead of asking the World Bank for a loan to build a natural gas pipeline that will leave you fucked over when (not if) international politics goes sour, use that money to start building generating capacity that doesn't leave you vulnerable.
        =Smidge=

        • Boot theory of economics (Score:5, Insightful)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday October 09, 2021 @11:04PM (#61876539)
          Otherwise known as the high cost of being poor.

          • That's why I was wondering about exporting. I don't know really how the world Bank collects on its debts in virtually any middle Eastern country. There is simply too much conflict but if building such facilities could help them become a network exporter, that seems like a profit motive.

            I agree though being poor can be a trap. I think tribalism often withers any social contract in these regions, so they are always dealing with significant corruption and other crime that destroys the value of any other nation

        • Re:Old habits die hard (Score:5, Insightful)

          by general_re ( 8883 ) on Sunday October 10, 2021 @12:50AM (#61876731) Homepage

          So really the question is, how could they afford to not transition to solar?

          Well, it's pretty easy. When you can only buy enough diesel to keep the lights on for 4 hours a day, there's no fund they can dip into to pay the up front cost of switching to solar. It may very well be cheaper to operate than the current system of diesel-fired generators, but the barrier to entry is high enough that it really doesn't matter if it's absolutely free to operate in the long run - there's no secret stash they can dip into to make the initial investment needed to make it a reality.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Jeremi ( 14640 )

            there's no secret stash they can dip into to make the initial investment needed to make it a reality

            That's true. In a financially stable country a person could get around that problem by taking out a loan, and using the money saved by the PV system to make the loan payments. Somehow, though, I doubt that's a viable option in Lebanon at the moment :(

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

          Fuel is an ongoing cost that in this case puts you at them at the mercy of external markets and supply chains (and having their fuel stolen by smugglers)

          As I noted before, there has been a massive influx of refugees from Syria, and Lebanon is broke. It does not have the capital to build enough sanitation for the refugees, let along build out solar.

          • If you have refugees, that means you have a pool of labor. Any intelligent civilization would leverage its wealth, which there is a concentrated abundance of (remember, it is being stored for luxuries, like condos), and really build something useful and sustainable. You are looking at a massive credit on a ledger as a deficit. Labor can be used to build an eco-utopia, only the powers that be refuse to envision it and willfully pursues the worst course of action and/or Israel will jealously smash it to piece

      • Re:Old habits die hard (Score:5, Insightful)

        by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Saturday October 09, 2021 @10:41PM (#61876513)
        Because sunlight is even cheaper than diesel fuel, which goes for around $4.3/US gal. in Lebanon these days? Not sure if that is "dirt cheap", honestly. Nearby countries: Jordan, around $3/US gal., Syria: $0.6/US gal., Israel: $7.3/US gal., Turkey: $3.1/US gal (source [globalpetrolprices.com]). Assuming, say, 10 kWh of electricity per gallon of diesel fuel from a small generator, you're looking at ~$0.43/kWh from a generator. Places with such electricity rates are usually very solar-friendly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kremmy ( 793693 )
          I'm guessing the instability in the region is making it difficult to get strong sources of the whole kit. solar panels, charge controllers, inverters, battery banks, they're all fairly simple conceptually but that doesn't mean a collapsing country can build them internally or get a strong supply line from elsewhere without a lot of difficulty.

        • Because sunlight is even cheaper than diesel fuel,

          Cost of storage far exceeds cost of "sunlight".

          • Storage is the least of your worries if you're trying to scrounge up enough fuel to run four hours per day. Even without storage you'd be doubling the outcome with PV.

            • Storage is the least of your worries if you're trying to scrounge up enough fuel to run four hours per day. Even without storage you'd be doubling the outcome with PV.

              This does not work. PVs are useless without grid tie or storage. It is not feasible to run loads directly off panels.

      • Diesel fuel for a power plant is not dirt cheap.
        Did you ever look how much fuel a power plant needs?

        Seriously? Only complete idiots and morons on /. in our days?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by general_re ( 8883 )
          If you're buying 80,000 tons per month, you're not paying the $4.34/gallon retail price, idiot.

          • Does not change the fact that it is definitely not "dirt cheap".
            Otherwise: they had bought it, and mad a fortune by converting it into electricity: moron?

    • Be careful, you are thinking like an intelligent, rational human being. A lot of people don't like that.
    • They didnâ(TM)t collapse because of power issues. They collapsed because their main export was jewellery. In other words that never really had a proper contingent of primary industries, their currency was proped up with leveraging tricks.

      • Yeah, the summary makes it clear their economy was already in trouble. Thanks for bettering explaining their economic failure.

        My major point was building themselves to be a potential net exporter of energy when the economy was stable but now that ship has sailed...

  • Half Lebanese here (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Lebanese people just have themselves to blame. They deserve this. From the lowest municipality level to the parliament, they keep electing again and again the same corrupt people, because "that guy can give me a vanity license plate", or "that guy allows me to install my diesel generators on street corners", or "that guy sped up my passport process", or "that guy is of my same religious sect", or "that guy can give me a license to privatize that natural water spring". The result is as another here sai

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If it helps any, you also just described California politics, except that the exchanges of favors are seldom seen by or to the benefit of anyone who might be called "the public". We are working hard to meet the Lebanese standard of grid reliability.
  • Elon saw this coming a decade+ ago.

    • This comment is trying to shove a solution into places without understanding the problem. Tesla Energy would not solve the problem Lebanon has.

  • The government is working to secure emergency fuel supplies from other sources, including the army, to bridge the shortfall until a shipment of Iraqi oil due to arrive Saturday night can be offloaded and distributed into the network. At most, he said, the total outage can be expected to last only a couple of days, and he hoped to find a stopgap solution faster.

    Judging by this paragraph, I assume they shut down the generators and the national grid gracefully?

    After all the stories about the Texas power outage in February and the talk about the load pulling the available generation too much (dropping frequency too far below 60 Hz). Those stories said that if ERCOT had actually crashed their grid it would have been down for months. So I'm a bit confused how the entire country of Labanon can recover theirs in only a few days. Unless this headline is being overdramatic

  • As a prosperous banking center, Lebanon had no difficulty funding a modern electrical grid and keeping it updated. But when you go from neoliberal prosperity to primitive tribalism, you have to give all those modern things, especially after the people who could make it happen are driven away.

  • We fund iron dome and a buch of other stuff we should have helped Lebanon a long time ago
  • A fossil based grid fails because of a lack of fuel.... Makes the silly petty arguments against the increased use of renewables look stupid now (as they always did).

    • Ever hear of "the cedars of Lebanon"? There are no cedars in Lebanon. There used to be. That renewable resource was exploited to extinction.

  • Say a big f*ck you to bullies and make a good deal with Iran.

  • I'm pretty sure that Hezbollah has this well in hand and power will be restored when Allah, or Iran, so deems.

  • Just a reminder while sipping your Starbucks (Score:3)

    by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Sunday October 10, 2021 @06:11PM (#61878653)
    The third world is a terrible, terrible place. Don't travel there. Don't invest your money there. Let it be exactly what it is, because no matter how virtuous and idealistic you may think, nothing will ever change those areas for the better. Not while the local smugglers and corrupt people are still there.

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