Carthage Magazine

Tunis, July 15, 2026 — Tunisia is grappling with a wave of power cuts of unusual scale this week, as a punishing heatwave drives electricity consumption to record levels and forces the state utility into rotating load-shedding to keep the national grid from collapsing. For several days, residents across the country — including the La Soukra district and the southern suburbs of Greater Tunis — have reported sudden outages during the hottest hours of the afternoon, when air conditioners running at full capacity push demand to its daily peak. The cuts have triggered a flood of anger and frustration on social media, with citizens demanding explanations, compensation, and accountability. A deliberate measure, not a breakdown Officials at the Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas (STEG) say the interruptions are not random failures. Consumption peaks between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., and the utility is deliberately shedding load on a rotating basis to preserve the overall balance of the grid and avert a nationwide blackout. Hospitals and other sensitive facilities are prioritized, and in moderate conditions the cuts are meant to last no more than about 30 minutes per area. The approach is familiar. Tunisia resorted to similar rotating cuts during the heatwaves of 2023 and 2025, and the country experienced a near-total nationwide blackout in September 2023 after a breakdown at the Radès power station south of Tunis. Complicating the picture, not every outage this week is heat-related. STEG has also announced planned interruptions for maintenance and upgrade work — including line reinforcement in Sfax and technical tests in Kairouan ahead of the commissioning of a new transformer station — meaning some neighborhoods have gone dark for reasons unrelated to demand. Real human costs The consequences go well beyond the discomfort of a home without air conditioning in 40-degree heat. Chronically ill patients treated at home, whose oxygen concentrators depend entirely on the electrical grid, face a direct threat to their lives when the power fails without warning. Consumer advocates have also warned that abrupt cuts and the voltage surges that follow restoration are damaging household appliances, and that many citizens are unaware of their rights to seek compensation from STEG. Adding to public frustration is what critics describe as a lack of clear, timely communication from the utility about when and where cuts will occur. A structural crisis behind a seasonal trigger While the heatwave is the immediate trigger, energy experts point to deeper problems. Tunisia's power sector has virtually no spare generation capacity, the result of years of delays in building new plants, even as national electricity consumption grows by roughly 5 percent annually. STEG, which produces the overwhelming majority of the country's electricity — mostly from natural gas, much of it imported from Algeria — has struggled financially for years, and unions have long accused successive governments of starving the public utility of investment. Renewable energy, seen by many as part of the answer, still accounts for only a small fraction of the mix, well short of the national target of 35 percent by 2030. New solar projects and a planned 600 MW electricity interconnection with Italy are in the pipeline, but none will arrive in time to ease this summer's strain. With climate projections pointing to longer and more intense heatwaves in the years ahead, the question facing Tunisia is no longer whether the grid can survive one difficult summer — but whether it can be rebuilt fast enough to survive the next decade of them.

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