Meir Spiegler, CEO of the Israel Electric Corporation: restored electricity to religious communities and cut off secular communities (Photo: Yod Photos)
Meir Spiegler, CEO of the Israel Electric Corporation, reveals: "Localities with religious residents were not disconnected from the electricity grid so as not to harm them on Shabbat, we connected them to electricity and disconnected other communities."
Spiegler made the remarks at a conference of the Association of CEOs and Secretaries of Local Authorities held at the Queen of Sheba Hotel in Eilat.
"On Friday there was a planned power outage, but it can't be that some places are cut off and others aren't. Last Friday night, there were religious people who work with hot plates and electrical appliances that as soon as there were power cuts, the devices do not return to work and harm their Shabbat, so a firm order was issued to connect to the electricity grid before Shabbat begins all those communities where a religious majority lives and to disconnect from the electricity grid other places in the country."
Sunset over high-voltage power lines. Why is there no clean electricity transition from the south to the center? According to Spiegler, because of the lack of governance: "We are laying lines and the Bedouins are taking" (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Spiegler and the Order of the Guilty: From Manga to Lack of Governance
Spiegler added that various parts of the south of the country where there are cowsheds with animals that were in the blazing sun and in order to prevent animal mortality, were connected to the electricity supply and cut off other places.
The CEO of the Israel Electric Corporation described what happened last weekend:
"On Friday, unfortunately, there was improper conduct. 300,000 were cut off from the power grid. In 2018, it was decided to launch a reform and removed an internal organic unit that was in the Israel Electric Corporation, removed from the Israel Electric Corporation and established Noga. Noga's powers determine which station will be operated and which station will be shut down.
In order to operate a power plant for both an electric company and private producers, it is necessary to operate Noga, which manages the stations in relation to the estimates of consumption that it analyzes. On Wednesday, we received an order from Venus to operate two production units in Orot Rabin, and we did it.
It should be understood that these are power plant operations, it takes time. These are old stations with an old coal-fired operating system that takes between 36 hours and 40 hours from the moment the station is started until the moment it produces electricity. It took time for them to be activated, beyond that we were not required to operate additional power plants, although there were two other power plants in Orot Rabin and Rotenberg, it is clear that if we had been instructed to start the additional stations there would have been no shortage of energy and there would not have been a single lamp in the country that would not have been on.
Unfortunately they didn't take a reasonable margin, no one did it maliciously. There was a lack of electricity, and this deficiency had to be balanced by power outages. We didn't want to be on a day when power plants stop working and there's no electricity supply to communities in the country."
"The State of Israel is not doing enough, if at all, to eliminate bureaucracy and simplify clumsiness. Unfortunately, this leads to places that no normal country wants to be. This was a very unusual and very difficult case. Truth in facts. Venus said they did not take into account that there would be such a large consumption of energy. They were afraid to operate other power plants, lest they be told afterwards why they operated a power plant with coal-fired consumption."
Spiegler added: "Unfortunately in the Negev there is no governance. There is no transmission in the south because we deploy lines and the Bedouin take them. We are unable to complete this activity of this line that will carry clean energy from the south to the center of the country, even though we are coordinating with the security forces and it is still not going. Everyone is aware of the problem."
- money
- news
Tags
- Israel Electric Corporation
- Israel Electric Corporation
- Meir Spiegler
