Thousands of Bucharest residents are in the cold. 3,500 blocks were left without heat and hot water. When will the fault at CET Sud be fixed?

Thousands of families in Bucharest are left in the cold, after a major breakdown occurred at CET Sud, the repair of which will take some time, according to ELCEN representatives.

Thousands of families from Bucharest have been in the cold for several days. Photo by Shutterstock

3,500 blocks in sectors 2, 3, 4 and 5 have been left without hot water and heat since Sunday, January 4, at 6:50 a.m., when there was a malfunction of steam boiler No. 4 in the premises of CET Bucharest Sud, as a result of the evolution of the cracking of a pipe that has been under technical supervision for several days.

This incident led to the shutdown of steam turbine no. 4 related to this boiler.

“Technical interventions on the boiler can only be carried out after its complete cooling, which is why the estimated duration of the unavailability is approximately 3 days. Currently, there are no technical reserves that can fully take over the load of the unavailable energy group”, informed ELCEN, stating that, for now, CET Bucharest Sud operates with steam boiler no. 3 and steam turbine no. 3, as well as with two hot water boilers.

“This configuration allows maintaining the production of thermal energy necessary to supply the heating network, ensuring the continuity of the supply of the heating agent and limiting the impact of the temperature delivered to the fence of the plant, even in the conditions of the temporary unavailability of an energy group.

We emphasize that ELCEN employees make special efforts to keep in operation old equipment put into operation in the 60-70s and not modernized in time due to the long underfunding of the company which prevented the actions of major rehabilitation of the facilities. Termoenergetica's debt to ELCEN is currently approximately 1.5 billion lei“, the company informed

ELCEN reminds that on the site of the former CET Titan, modular thermal energy production capacities operated, which provided, for a period, additional heating agent for areas in the east and northeast of the Capital. Later, this equipment was taken out of operation by Termoenergetica, which led to the reduction of the local production capacity and the expansion of the area served by CET Bucharest Sud. In the absence of these additional sources, the demand on CET București Sud increased significantly, limiting the plant's operating flexibility in technical incident situations and increasing the pressure on some already very old equipment.