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Tens of thousands of people in New Mexico were without power Thursday as the first major winter storm of the season rolled across the northern two-thirds of the state and into Colorado, bringing with it snow and fierce winds that forced schools and government offices to close. Dozens of crews with Public Service Co. of New Mexico were mobilized to address widespread outages that had been reported overnight and in the early morning hours from Albuquerque to Santa Fe and beyond. The utility urged residents to be patient, saying there were about 41,000 people still affected by the outages. We know any time without power is frustrating, the company said in messages to customers. Schools in Santa Fe, Los Alamos and elsewhere across northern New Mexico canceled classes, while authorities warned people to stay off the roads. Plows were busy trying to keep major highways clear, but state police announced midday that Interstate 25 just south of the Colorado border was closed in both ...
A failure in an energy transmission line on Wednesday produced an unexpected blackout throughout Ecuador, the government said, days after announcing that there would be power outages in the country due to production problems. Ecuador's Minister of Energy Roberto Luque said in a message posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the failure was reported by the country's National Electricity Operator and caused "a cascade disconnection", leaving the nation without energy service. He added that efforts are being made to solve the problem and repair faulty power lines as soon as possible. In some sectors of the country the outage lasted 20 minutes, but media outlets and social media users reported that the problem continued in most cities. Emilia Cevallos, a waitress in a restaurant north of the capital, Quito, said the blackout was surprising. "We thought it was only in this sector, but when we left we realised that while some stores had connected generators, the majority did not have ...
Blaming the previous BJP government for the current power crisis in Karnataka, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said due to drought this year, consumption has gone up from 10,000 MW to 16,000 MW in October. Responding to questions on load-shedding in the state, he said the farmers are using more electricity for their pump sets in the absence of adequate rains this year. Despite being in power for five years, neither former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy nor BJP added even one megawatt of electricity. It is our government which generated more power in the state, Siddaramaiah told reporters here. Kumaraswamy ran a Congress-JD(S) coalition government for 14 months from 2018 to 2019 before it collapsed due to the disqualification of several MLAs after they crossed over to the BJP. Subsequently, the BJP came to power, and it lost to the Congress in the Assembly elections held in May this year. Due to lack of (adequate) rains this year, farmers are using more electricity for their pump sets.