Since last Friday, Endesa has intervened more than 100 times to guarantee the electricity supply in all the towns in the province of Zaragoza affected by the flooding of the Ebro River. The company has adopted all the measures at its disposal and has maintained a technical and human device activated and which consists of more than 80 people including its own staff and that of contractors, in order to ensure the quality of the electricity service in the main rural and urban centres, industrial estates and agricultural and livestock farms near the riverbed.
On 10 December, the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation declared a level 1 emergency as a result of extraordinary amount of water in the bed of the Ebro River, so Endesa activated an Emergency Operational Plan and proceeded to reinforce material and human resources with the aim of supervising all the points of the network that, from previous experience, they knew would be susceptible to flooding, in order to anticipate solutions to any possible incidents. The established review plan reached 23 installations of the medium voltage network of the city of Zaragoza and more than 80 medium and low voltage installations in the towns of Gallur, Pradilla de Ebro, Alcalá de Ebro, Remolinos, Boquiñeni, Cabañas de Ebro, Alagón, Alfocea, El Burgo de Ebro, Fuentes de Ebro, Osera de Ebro, Pina de Ebro, Quinto de Ebro, Gelsa, La Zaida, Sástago, Escatrón and Chiprana.
The main actions undertaken feature the installation of pumps for the extraction of water in substations and transformers; the preventive opening, in accordance with customers, of medium-voltage installations; the mobilisation of generators; an inspection of the high voltage network, especially in transformer substations that present a risk of flooding due to the high water table, and the monitoring of equipment, systems and other elements of the network such as supports and underground cable galleries.
All these actions are being coordinated and supervised by the Endesa Network Control Centre in Zaragoza, from where the correct functioning of the system is operated and controlled through unified management of all the company's resources. The Control Centre also provides an exclusive information service for the municipalities, with the aim of coordinating with the municipal technical services the management of possible incidents and in coordination with all local and regional emergency services, Civil Protection and State security forces.
Endesa will keep the Emergency Operational Plan active until there is no further risk of incidents in the electricity grid and problems with supply as a result of the flooding of the Ebro River.