Earthquakes, electricity and economic security

Looking at the title of my column today, you may be wondering about what electricity has to do with economic and national security. However, energy supply security is one of the basic elements of economic security. Moreover, since the economy has become the main agenda item with the recent global developments, the correlation between national and economic security is increasing with every passing day.

“System settlement” is a technical concept. It means the complete disappearance of electrical energy from the grid. The realization of such a situation is among the worst scenarios that can happen to a grid. Re-activation of the system as a result of the collapse of the entire electrical system is a process that requires a long time and effort. Not to mention the loss and chaos that will be experienced until the system is reactivated.

After the earthquake, the epicenter of which was Kahramanmaraş’s Pazarcık, at 04.17, there was a sudden drop in electricity consumption by up to 12%. This is a significant rate for a large-scale electricity system like Türkiye, where the supply-demand balance is critically important.

Such a sudden and large-scale power outage causes a huge surge in power transmission systems. If the electricity transmission system in Türkiye had not been able to protect itself against this fluctuation on February 6, 2023, we could have faced a technical failure that could lead to a power outage in the whole country.

With the surge that emerged immediately after the earthquake, if the system had settled on February 6, we could have faced an additional disaster that would have plunged the rest of Türkiye into darkness, negatively affecting the rescue efforts and further increasing the loss of life.

The Türkiye Electricity Transmission Inc., TEİAŞ for short, carries out the task of transmitting the electricity produced to the consumption centers in a continuous, balanced, and reliable manner through high voltage lines and transformers. TEİAŞ is the institution responsible not only for the transmission of electricity but also for planning and auditing, which evaluates supply and demand as a whole. In this respect, TEIAS checks the Turkish electricity system instantly and checks whether the generation is sufficient to meet the demand instantly. In other words, on the night of the earthquake, an additional technical disaster was prevented by TEİAŞ operating under the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources and Turkish engineers working in TEİAŞ.

Compensation for the slightest disruption in the operation of the electrical transmission system can result in costly power outages and thus serious damage. A long-term power outage that may occur after such a big earthquake in Kahramanmaraş could have dragged the whole of Türkiye into a great panic.

Meanwhile, keeping the electrical system constantly and sensitively balanced requires maintaining the voltage and frequency in the grid at ideal values. Thus, the sustainability of all systems connected to electrical energy, including production, is ensured. In this respect, securing a country's electricity supply security is also critical for economic security. For a country like Türkiye, which has one of the largest electricity markets in its region, the importance of electricity supply security is of course even greater.