Santiago, May 9, 2024 – With a 97% restoration rate for customers initially affected by the weather front that came through the Metropolitan Region this past Tuesday, today only 6,174 customers are still without power as of 6:30 p.m. this evening. During the day, over 200 teams have been dispatched to address these emergencies and will continue to work until all power has been restored.
In a press conference, the CEO of Enel Distribución reported on the outage response process. “All our crews are out working in the field. We have reinforced our operations eight-fold, and we are trying to ensure that customers who have already spent two nights without electricity have their power restored today. We are truly sorry for this situation. We have been managing it to the best of our ability, and we won’t rest until power is restored for each and every one of our customers.”
With respect to the causes of the power outages, Víctor Tavera, CEO of Enel Distribución, explained that “winds of over 50 kph, more than 50 mm of rain in a short period of time, and snow, caused branches and trees to fall, with a significant impact on our distribution network, which is 80% overhead. Additionally, the outage points are dispersed throughout the area, which complicates and slows down the restoration work. We have never experienced such a massive number of small outages at the same time before. Half of these are located in our customers' homes and need to be resolved one by one.”
Tavera explained that the majority of the outages “are due to trees falling on our infrastructure. We are going on a 10-year drought, the trees are old, and with gusts of wind and heavy rain, these outages happen despite the preventive maintenance we have been carrying out since last November with 40,000 pruning points over an extension of more than 1,300 km of power lines.”
With respect to electro-dependent customers, the CEO reported that they have been given priority through preferential telephone assistance for the installation of on-site generators. Between May 7th and today at 6:00 p.m., 171 units have already been delivered. Additionally, the company spent all day proactively contacting the entire database of electro-dependent customers to inquire if they needed support, and those who said they did were offered a generator.
When asked about monetary compensation, Víctor Tavera explained that current regulations establish legal compensations that are automatically applied to customer accounts when they experience outages of over nine hours in a rolling twelve-month period. These compensations are valued at ten times the price of electricity.
Customer Service Channels
Enel Distribución reinforced its customer information and service channels, including its WhatsApp account (+56994447606), where customers can report emergencies and request information. In addition to the website enel.cl/clientes, the free mobile app “Enel Clientes Chile,” and the Contact Center 6006960000/800800696.
Enel Distribucion has a georeferenced technology platform that shows the status of the electric power supply, detailed by sector, and summarized by municipality. It is updated every 15 minutes on the website enel.cl, and can be accessed directly at the following link https://www.enel.cl/es/clientes/emergencias/mapa-en-linea-cortes.html
Enel Distribución supplies energy to over 2 million customers. Its concession area is and covers 33 municipalities exclusively in the Metropolitan Region: Cerrillos, Cerro Navia, Conchalí, Estación Central, Independencia, La Cisterna, La Florida, La Granja, La Reina, Las Condes, Lo Espejo, Lo Prado, Macul, Maipú, Ñuñoa, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, Peñalolén, Pudahuel, Quinta Normal, Recoleta, Renca, San Joaquín, San Miguel, San Ramón, Vitacura, Santiago, Providencia, Huechuraba, Quilicura, Lo Barnechea, Colina, Lampa and Til Til.