Following the massive power disruption that crippled the Argentinean power systems, Ankit Mathur, practice head of power at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on Argentina’s power industry:
“The power outage uncovered the decrepit state of power infrastructure in Argentina and with an increasing population and urbanisation, the power demand is set to rise in the country. In order to deal with such power interruptions, it is crucial that the country invests heavily in electricity network expansion. The revamp of the age old infrastructure and transformation of the power generating sources to clean energy technologies must be aided with the technological advancements for faster acceleration.
“The country proposed a plan with the public private partnership (PPP) model two years ago to infuse investments to revamp the country’s ageing infrastructure. Unfortunately, the deepening economic crisis amid high inflation, high interest rate and weakened local currency brought the infrastructure projects to a halt.
“The Argentinean government’s PPP program included 60 projects for implementation spanning across major infrastructure and social sectors including energy, transport and mining. PPP projects for energy and power included public lighting replacement to LED lights and construction of 3,300 kilometres of new high voltage electric transmission lines. These upcoming transmission projects will help reduce the limited grid availability issue faced by the generators.”
