Barrak, the executive president of the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), has said that the high temperatures in the west of the Kingdom recently put eight electricity generator units temporarily out of action. “The failure was caused by a hot sandstorm which hit the Jeddah region and the temperatures have greatly reduced the capabilities of generator plants,” Al-Barrak said. “But we were able to get the units operating again after a short time and return full power to all users.” He added that the increased temperatures in the central and western regions had led to a 12 percent increase on the highest-ever demand in Riyadh recorded in 2009. “Users in the central region and the east have not been affected by the power cuts,” he said. “The SEC has managed to keep supplying them all with electricity.” The chairman of the Shoura Council's Water, Utilities and Public Services Committee, meanwhile, has said that the SEC is “suffering from a lot of problems”. Muhammad Al-Quwaihis said the SEC needed to find “urgent and swift solutions to these annual power cuts” and draw up a “strategic plan with real effects on the ground”. “The SEC has numerous problems in its reserve energy facilities, failures in generator machinery capabilities, transporting networks, and insufficient distribution systems. It also has issues with ageing generators passing their operational life spans,” Al-Quwaihis said. The Civil Defense, meanwhile, revealed that the Jeddah governorate has been witnessing 40 fires per day provoked by high temperatures. Officials revealed the figure while warning motorists to “ensure they had enough water in their engine cooling systems”, and added that numerous calls had been received to deal with fires started by electrical short circuits provoked by system overloads from excessive demand”. The spokesman for the Presidency of Meteorology and Environment (PME) said the rise in temperatures was due to winds proceeding from the east Mediterranean, and that officials were constantly monitoring potential changes. “We have 40 temperature gauging stations across the country, including at airports and in cities,” said spokesman Hussein Al-Qahtani. Sources at the Jeddah Traffic Department, meanwhile, said it had stepped up patrols in readiness for any emergency, prepared to supply electricity generators and attend to traffic lights that may be damaged by sudden losses of power. Khaled Al-Habashi, the manager of the Red Crescent in the province of Makkah, said that no casualties had been reported due to the heat. – Abdullah Abeedalahh Al-Ghamdi, Muhammad Al-Daqa'i and Abdul Aziz Al-Thubaiti contributed to this report __
