UTE's investment plan made it possible to cover the historical consumption peak in Uruguay

This press release from Uruguay's government was published using an automatic translation system.

"For the first time, this summer I had beaten the winter peaks and, now, this winter beat the summer peaks, we were at 2,063 megawatts, it was a very cold day," said Gonzalo Casaravilla, referring to the maximum of electric power consumption recorded on Monday night 23. The peak with the highest demand was 1,997 megawatts and was registered at 3:00 p.m. on January 20 of this year, he added.

Casaravilla informed that UTE managed to meet the demand with 100% renewable energy: 34% wind, 3% biomass and the rest, hydraulic energy. In addition, one hour after the maximum recorded, the company exported some 400 megawatts of renewable energy to Brazil.

"At the time of the peak, 99.9% of UTE customers had regular service without any difficulty," he said.

Despite the fact that consumer demand grows between 2 and 2.5% each year, the public company is located in the 20% of the best services in Latin America, in the parameters used to measure supply cuts: the cutting time medium and the average frequency of cut.

Casaravilla denied that UTE did not make the necessary investments and recalled that in the past period 1,700 million dollars were invested and in this will be 1,300 million. "Three billion dollars in 10 years of investment is a number that does not exist in history," he said. This growing trend began in 2005 when UTE "started to wake up after years of not making investments," he added.

The chief noted that investments that were not made within the fiscal space are made through various forms, such as leasing for the acquisition of new meters or the construction of the Tacuarembó-Melo line for almost 80 million dollars of investment.

"We are in the best historical moment of the investments, of the purchase of material and equipment for the workers, from the salary and infrastructure point of view, therefore, we have no reason why we can not provide the service in the best conditions, "he concluded.