Power outages reach Iraq’s capital as temperatures continue climb

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The lack of electricity in the middle of scorching summer heat has now reached Iraq’s capital Baghdad after a blackout hit southern provinces earlier in the week, according to reports.

Electricity was cut for as long as five hours on Thursday night, impacting the capital, including its high-class areas that are often unaffected by the country’s poor infrastructure.

According to data from Iraq's electricity ministry, whose boss recently resigned, power generation during the blackout was around 4,000 Megawatts, less than 16,0000 MW the public grid requires on average to function, the Associated Press reported.

The cut comes as Iraq faces skyrocketing temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius in parts of the south and center of the country, only a month into the official summer season. Temperatures typically remain high until the end of September.  

Iraqi officials did not publicly disclose the cause of the outage, but local media reports indicated the shutdown of a major power line located between the capital and southern Babylon province which had suffered similar issues for days.

Iran recently cut its electricity exports to Iraq over unpaid bills. Due to US sanctions on its neighbor, Iraq cannot directly pay for the Iranian power. Rather, it pays for Iran’s essential medicine and food, and Tehran is now claiming the payment was not made on time. 

Outrage over poor electricity and other public services was one of the factors in the October 2019 protests across Iraq that called for the removal of the political elite.

“If this isn’t resolved quickly it will have a catastrophic effect as everything stops working,” Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi politics analyst at the Century Foundation, said of the outage on Friday, adding the country is facing water shortages as well.