Power restored to Addu City within an hour after resolving engine issue

Electricity has been restored to the linked islands of Addu City an hour after a full blackout triggered by an engine issue that shut down the main powerhouse.

Addu, home to the largest residential population outside of Male’, has been affected for months by frequent power interruptions.

The latest power interruption hit Addu City at 9:41am on Monday morning.

 The Addu branch of the state utility service Fenaka Corporation confirmed the outage on Monday morning in a message they shared via their official Viber group, attributing it to an issue with an engine at the city’s main powerhouse located in Hithadhoo.

The utility service said they were working on resolving the issue, but did not say when they expect to be able to restore power.

In a later message at 11:01am, Fenaka confirmed that power has been restored to all districts of Addu City.

Fenaka installed a 1.8-megawatt generator set on February 21 to fix the power outages in the linked islands of the city. Another 1-megawatt generator set was sent on March 13, and a 1.8-megawatt generator on March 25.

But the city continues to be affected by power disruptions.

Fenaka has previously said it needs generators to create an additional 15 kilowatts of power to fuel the city.

Many rest their hopes in a project to build a powerhouse in Addu, the work on which has yet to start.