Argentina’s Empresa Distribuidora de Energía Sur S.A. (Edesur) has been sanctioned for the third time due to blackouts that took place between December 2022 and March 2023. The Ente Nacional Regulador de la Electricidad (ENRE), the state agency in charge of overseeing electricity supply in the country, has ordered Edesur to reimburse 471,080,973 pesos (US$1,845,886) to 202,287 users who experienced prolonged power outages between March 6 and 20.
The ENRE’s resolution establishes that Edesur must apply these bonuses to the next bills of the affected users, specifically for those outages that lasted 10 hours or more continuously. The ENRE’s Comptroller, Walter Martello, emphasized the importance of users submitting complaints both to the distribution companies and to the regulatory agency so that these types of penalties can be applied.
This latest sanction is in addition to those previously imposed on Edesur. On April 19, the ENRE announced that the company had to pay 132,665,280 pesos (US$519,836) to users affected by the power outages from December 5 to 12. In addition, on May 18, another sanction was notified for the outages that occurred between February 6 and 16, 2023, with a compensation amount of 126,980,037 pesos (US$497,559).
In total, the three penalties amount to Ps. 730,726,290 (US$ 2,863,282) to be paid to a total of 339,609 users affected by the outages. The ENRE clarifies that the amount that each user will receive will vary according to the amount and duration of the outages experienced during the mentioned period.